Senior huntsman overturns conviction for encouraging illegal fox hunting after judge rules his advice to use trail hunting as a ‘smokescreen’ was about fooling animal rights activists and NOT police
- Mark Hankinson, 61, was accused of encouraging illegal fox hunting
- Senior huntsman was convicted last year after webinar was leaked to police
- Ex-Hunting Office boss has successfully appealed at Southwark Crown Court
- He insisted he advised using trail hunting to trick animal rights activists
A prominent huntsman has overturned his conviction for encouraging illegal fox hunts in two private webinars by claiming his advice to use trail hunting was about fooling animal rights activists, not police.
Mark Hankinson, 61, was alleged to have told members of the Hunting Office to use legal trail hunting as a ‘smokescreen’ for criminal activity while director of the Masters of Foxhounds Association.
The prosecution was brought after saboteurs leaked footage of his August 11, 2020 webinar, attended by 100 people, including police officers, lawyers and a member of the House of Lords, to police and the media.
The huntsman, of Frampton Farm in Sherborne, Dorset, was accused of intentionally encouraging huntsmen to use trail hunting – where horseback riders and hounds follow a previously laid scent – as ‘a sham and a fiction’ for the unlawful chasing and killing of animals.
He was last year found guilty of encouraging the commission of an offence of unlawful hunting at Westminster Magistrates’ Court and ordered to pay a £1,000 fine and £2,500 in costs.
But appealing his conviction at Southwark Crown Court, Hankinson insisted he was referring to the practice of laying dummy trails to fool saboteurs who disrupt legal hunts, not police.
Mark Hankinson leaving Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London in October last year
File photo of riders follow a trail during the Avon Vale Boxing Day Hunt in Lacock in 2014
What is trail hunting? And why is it so controversial?
Trail hunting was devised in the wake of the 2004 Hunting Act to legally replicate the outlawed sport as closely as possible.
Under the rules, horseback riders with dogs can legally follow trails laid with scent, instead of chasing a live animal.
However, if hounds were to pick up the scent of a fox and chase it as a result of the trail, then there are no legal consequences.
The League Against Cruel Sports claims trail hunting is a cover for illegal hunting, designed to deceive the authorities and make the prosecution of illegal hunters very difficult.
The 2004 Hunting Act banned hunting foxes with hounds, but there have been reports of breaches since.
Giving evidence in front of a judge and two magistrates, the huntsman did not deny saying: ‘It’s a lot easier to create a smokescreen if you’ve got more than one trail layer operating and that is what it is all about, trying to portray to the people watching that you’re going about your legitimate business.’
At his trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court last year, Hankinson claimed his words were intended to ‘help educate our members and to enforce the need for proper practice.’
He said he had simply advised attendees on the ‘need [for] proper evidence of that for when they are being scrutinised by malicious opponents’, detailing an incident wherein one of his huntsmen was assaulted by ‘hunt saboteurs’.
Judge Gregory Perrins said today: ‘Someone listening to his words might well have taken the view that he was encouraging illegal hunting.’
The judge said he and the magistrates were not satisfied to the criminal standard it was his intention to encourage illegal hunting and allowed the appeal against his conviction, highlighting a second webinar in which nothing he said was the subject of any charge.
‘We accept his role within the Hunting Office was to ensure compliance with the law and the Hunting Office itself is committed to lawful hunting,’ he said.
‘In those circumstances it would be unusual if they now took the decision to host a series of webinars which included advice on how to work around the ban.’
He added: ‘However, what is perhaps more significant is the fact that the appellant’s words in the first webinar do not amount to clear evidence of encouraging illegal hunting.’
The case had been brought by The League Against Cruel Sports, a campaign organisation against hunting which was instrumental in bringing about the 2004 Hunting Act.
After Hankinson won his appeal, the League urged the Government to strengthen the Hunting Act.
Mark Hankinson arriving at Southwark Crown Court on July 8, 2022
Its chief executive Andy Knott said: ‘The appeal result changes nothing in terms of our position, because only by strengthening the Hunting Act by closing its many loopholes and outlawing so-called trail hunting can illegal hunting be properly stopped and those determined to carry on persecuting wildlife brought to justice.
‘While we wait for those in power to do the right thing and strengthen the Hunting Act we urge those who give licences for potential criminal activity to take place on their land to remove those permissions and help us bring an end to this so-called sport.’
Tim Bonner, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, said the successful appeal raised ‘big questions about the knee-jerk reaction’ to the conviction.
‘Some institutional landowners banned legal trail hunts and the police and CPS have brought a spate of prosecutions against hunts, many of which have already failed,’ he said in a statement.
‘Trail hunting is a legitimate activity carried out by hundreds of hunts across the country.
‘As this successful appeal shows, the police, public and politicians need to be extremely careful about believing spurious allegations made by prejudiced anti-hunt activists.’
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