Boxing Day Hunts.

Boxing Day Hunts.

The traditional Boxing Day hunt meets are a showpiece events on the hunting calendar. Hunts will parade through towns letting the public meet the horses and hounds, as they try paint a chocolate box image of hunting and a  sense of an idyllic lifestyle…. All very nice. But a complete crock of lies.

Despite being banned under the 2004 Hunting Act fox hunting continues just as it did pre ban, maybe just a bit more secretive now. You do not need to scratch too deep to find the truth about hunting. Just get yourself onto social media on Boxing Day evening and you’ll see reports from saboteurs and monitors of foxes and hares being killed even on this day when hunts should be on their best behaviour with the public watching. These are not just a bunch of drunken buffoons on horseback out on their jollies, there’s a much more sinister side they don’t want you to see. Just ask them about cub hunting, when they train their hounds to kill foxes by surrounding woodlands and setting the hounds on young foxes. Ask them why they have terrier men out on quads? The answer is to dig out any foxes that have run to ground to seek refuge, then thrown them to the hounds. Ask the hunt what is a bagged fox? Why are they breeding foxes if in fact hunting is pest control? 

We have two big Boxing Day hunt parades in North Wales, well not so big nowadays. The Eryri hunt will be in Beddgelert, interestingly much of the land the Eryri hunt on is Snowdonia national park and land belonging to the National Trust. Yet the Eryri currently do not have a licence to hunt on National Trust land. Anybody who spots the Eryri hunt out particularly on National Trust land please yet us know and also inform the National Trust if you expect the hunt of trespassing. The other hunt is the Flint and Denbigh hunt who will be parading through Denbigh town before heading to the Llindir Inn in Henllan for even more to drink before wobbling to Trefnant to put on a bit of a display to the watching public. We are not suggesting people should avoid Denbigh town centre on Boxing Day as there is another event taking place. The annual roll the barrel, which the hunt seem to have latched onto the back off. The roll the barrel event is nothing to do with the hunt or the boxing day hunt parade. But what the Flint and Denbigh hunt will do is take photos of the crowd who have turned up for roll the barrel and then claim hunting is as popular as ever just look at the crowds who’ve turned up to see us off. Truth being the Flint and Denbigh hunts numbers have halved since the introduction of the hunting act. The truth is landowners are sick of the damage the hunt cause, the truth is riders are dropping out of the hunt as police are at every hunt meet as this hunt is under police investigation for illegal hunting. Wildlife officers have been out this season with drones filming this illegal hunt.

A debate started on a local Denbigh Facebook  group with the vast majority saying they do not want the hunt in the town on Boxing Day. Some of the members of the hunt joined in spreading the usual propaganda. One member even claiming the Flint and Denbigh are a drag hunt, but not being able to tell us the difference between drag hunting (legitimately following an artificial scent) and a trail hunt (a myth made up by hunters to allow them to continue to illegally hunt) Some of the comments by the F&D were embarrassing, no wonder the Huntmaster Jeremy Reed has banned his members from talking about hunting on social media. Denbigh town Council tell us the parade is nothing to do with them and it’s the police who arrange for the roads to be closed for the hunt…. Seems a bit strange as NWP are fully aware this is an illegal fox hunt. Would North Wales Police close the roads for any other criminal group to have a parade to drum up support? Local drug dealers parading to have a January sale? Shoplifters parading through town holding sacks of goodies they’ve snatched? We think not, so why this lot of animal abusing violent thugs? There’s no place for this sort of display in a civilised world. 84% of the public are against hunting with hounds, and that includes Denbigh residents.  Nobody believes their trail hunting myth. When you read the reports on Boxing Day evening it will not be words like ‘tradition’ and ‘idyllic’ it will be ‘barbaric’ and ‘bloodlust’. Let’s hope we’ll soon see the end of Boxing Day parades, and good luck to everyone entering this year’s roll the barrel.