Killing Hares With Dogs

The sight they saw filled the men with dread
For where the Hare fell, a Witch lay dead

www.independent.co.uk... true

In Lincolnshire it's hare-coursing season and every day, gangs descend on farms, intimidate farmers and set their dogs on the local wildlife.

Hare coursing was banned in 2004, but the underground scene is thriving. Dogs compete against each other while their owners bet on a range of factors including how many times their dogs can turn a terrified hare as it is chased down and ripped to pieces. Champion dogs change hands for up to £50,000.

. . . it is an unavoidable fact that members of the traveller community form a large percentage of hare coursers, with insiders claiming the “sport” is worth millions in the traveller economy. PC Willey is careful to point out that coursers come from a range of backgrounds and professions.

“They are very organised,” he explains. “Meetings are arranged over the phone or on social media. Coursing is done for betting and sport, the hares are torn apart and left.

. . . Hare coursing is a business. It's about gangs and violence. People are scared. When five or six people in cars arrive on your land with six or seven dogs it is not pleasant.

. . . John O'Donagh is a 35-year-old traveller and hare courser from Kent

“For travellers, coursing is a tradition that goes back hundreds of years, since the days we lived in tents, before wagons and caravans. It's in our folklore.

“For a traveller, having a good dog is like having a thoroughbred horse. The betting and money changing hands has blown out of all proportion. A good dog can earn a man hundreds of thousands. Star dogs are worth between £30,000 and £50,000 and I've heard of people making £500,000 in a year on betting.

“There are cars, vans and trailers bet on it. You'll even bet your wife on it. A good dog is more important to a traveller than a wife and a traveller will kill you for his dog.

“Travellers will never show the outside world inside hare coursing. It's organised over the phone and by word of mouth. You'll get lads in vans because too many cars look suspicious. There will be a referee along to make sure it's done fairly. Each man will carry £100 cash. Bets are honoured. If you don't pay, it is a disgrace on you and your family name.

“A good hare can run a dog until the dog has a heart attack because the dog won't stop. The cruelty of it is that if the dog is no good it is left there. The farmers can usually do nothing because there can be up to 20 boys involved. It was banned but that makes no difference – travellers will do it anyway. It's in our blood.”

I hunted with dogs. It was a huge thrill. But cruelty, betting and threatening gang violence? That's nothing to be proud of.

So if this practice was banned in 2004, then that means you can legally shoot these people if they are on your land. In the article it says people are scared when tons of people show up on their property, what.. they just shiver in a corner?

I wouldn't want this crap going on at my property, so I'd take whatever measures I needed to remove this crap from my land. Its wasteful, and disgusting.. its one thing to kill an animal for food, but its another to kill animals for "sport" especially if all they are doing is letting dogs maul them to pieces.

Humans are stupid.

a reply to: Kester

Pikey scum is all Kester, and I can't blame the farmers who are # scared of them.
Even when they call the rural cops, by the time they get there they stop and move on, and as nobody will admit to hare coursing, there is no chance of a prosecution.
I put hare coursers in the same scum category as fox hunters, just they are rich scum.

I used to go lamping every chance I got when I was younger, went for bunnies tho not hares but sometimes at night it's hard to tell the difference

The dogs don't rip em to shreds, if their trained well they'll bring um back to you

Where we used to go down in Somerset we had permission of the farmers who's land we were on, they didn't mind

We used to cook um up for the dogs and for the birds of prey some of the lads had and some stuck um in the stew pot for themselves

a reply to: Thefarmer

Hunting with dogs is the natural way. It's an essential skill that has to be kept alive. I had to laugh when the legislation came in. After tens of thousands of years they make a rule against it? It's like telling us not to bear arms for self defence. Speaking of which. I'm of the opinion a violent gang or two need to be shot for a laugh, just to see what the reaction is from the betting crew. Should ginger them up a bit. It's all sport.


This lot wouldn't threaten a farmer, would they? If they did I'd like to see them shot.

originally posted by: eXia7
So if this practice was banned in 2004, then that means you can legally shoot these people if they are on your land. In the article it says people are scared when tons of people show up on their property, what.. they just shiver in a corner?

I wouldn't want this crap going on at my property, so I'd take whatever measures I needed to remove this crap from my land. Its wasteful, and disgusting.. its one thing to kill an animal for food, but its another to kill animals for "sport" especially if all they are doing is letting dogs maul them to pieces.

Humans are stupid.

It's not that simple. I think the problem is that you would have to kill all of them, and ensure nobody else knew that it was you who killed them, unless you wanted others to come back, burn your house down, kill your livestock and your family.

a reply to: grainofsand

Some of the hare coursers will be richer than some of the fox hunters.

I used to look after a valuable fox hunting horse while the owner was away. She'd bred the horse herself, although the horse was extremely valuable the owner didn't pay a lot to get her. It was just years of dedicated work. The owner was anything but rich. A salt of the earth countrywoman. She broke her back in a fall from an unfamiliar horse with bad habits she hadn't been told of. To counteract the pain she used herbal cannabis.

One day a posh local chap came to take her horse out. My friend put the horse in the garden for twenty minutes while they chatted. Then the chap took the horse out.

Half an hour later he came back looking distraught leading the horse. "I've never seen anything like it!" He said. "She can hardly lift her feet!" Realising the significance of the twenty minutes the horse had spent in the garden, my friend got the horse into the stable and persuaded the posh chap to leave, then went and checked the garden.

The poor horse had eaten half a flowering cannabis plant. She dragged her back hooves so much the hoof and shoe were worn square across the front. She recovered.

You get all sorts in the fox hunting crowd.

a reply to: Kester

Cool story fella
...and agreed about the money thing, I meant to use posh instead of rich, should've changed it.

a reply to: dogstar23

That is the issue. They think they can get away with murder. The only way to stop them is to kill the lot.

When an Irish documentary crew went around Ireland making a documentary about travellers they found a different mood in every area. In one area many of the travellers were musicians and the documentary makers were made very welcome. In Rathkeale they were followed by a threatening gang everywhere they went. The Rathkeale mob are the rhino horn thieves, hated from here to Australia, literally.

You are absolutely right. The violent criminal travellers have chosen a path that can only result in them being decimated.

a reply to: eXia7

Most of the criminal hare coursing types are childish, stupid beefy types who love cruelty and death. They are cowards who rely on attacking as a gang and returning to poison dogs, burn houses, commit murder etc. for years afterwards. Some of these people know their history and are proud to have been mercenaries for the Romans. Others are kept deliberately ignorant so they can be controlled and used.

These are the kind of people we're talking about.

I've seen evidence they have been infiltrated by British Intelligence since at least the 1960's and manipulated into being even more at odds with mainstream society than they naturally are.

I could add here there have been requests in Ireland for the army to be called out when they go on a 300 man pub crawl/rampage.

a reply to: Kester
Personally, I feel killing any living thing for sport only, is vile. It is no wonder that we can't live in peace, when we have so little respect for life.

It is interesting though that my dogs who are well fed and well cared for, don't even lift their ears when the rabbit are running about close enough that they can almost touch them. Same with the neighbor's chickens. Their bellies are full, so why kill something you don't need. It takes way too much energy lost for a pair of lazy, spoiled canines.

That isn't true with the pesky squirrels though, that terrorize them every chance the get. Those squirrels get so much joy out of tormenting my dogs, that they will jump on the porch screens to flip their tails at them, just to agitate them.

They would be fair game, it their lazy butts could actually catch one.

a reply to: Kester

The sight they saw filled the men with dread
For where the Hair fell, a Witch lay dead

Fixed.

This superstition sound familiar...

a reply to: eXia7

Absolutely. I wouldn't hesitate a heartbeat.

There'd be dead dogs all over the place. Owner of said dogs don't like it? Take it up with the local cops.

The only thing I'd ever hunt with a dog, would be birds. I just don't like the idea, never have.

Should have read a bit further on. Travellers? That puts an entirely different spin on it.

a reply to: seagull

Like all groups travellers come in all kinds. From the best to the worst. When I was destitute in Ireland it was an Irish traveller who came to my aid with a laugh and no thought of repayment. We bought a horse drawn caravan from some very rough looking Irish tinkers. I feel honoured to have known them. They had no greed or ill will towards others. Their great love was to "See a bit of the country".

But then you get to the worst sort. Dealing drugs. Robbing other drug dealers. Smuggling cigarettes inside foam couches that don't even pass the fire safety tests. These couches are then sold to overtrusting householders and the old furniture taken away and dumped at the roadside.

Blocking public footpaths. Threatening violence to anyone who speaks against them. Running over pet dogs to try and make a man fight.

Constantly bleating about being a misunderstood minority who need wishy washy do gooders to fight their battles for them. Meanwhile the men are off as far away as Australia selling the same generators they sell here. Bought from China by the container load. When the innocent buyer tries to use their generator it turns out to be useless.

In Australia the farm lads robbed the Rathkeale travellers at gunpoint. The authorities laughed at the travellers reporting it as a crime and did this to their generators.

Meanwhile over here all the 'anarchist' spook run protest groups told us we had to defend Dale Farm. One or two half-wits turned up.

Their official address is Rathkeale, Co Limerick, but they live at a halting site in Essex, England. Gang members have been banned from Australia after a trail of consumer rip-offs last year.

www.irishecho.com.au...

" . . . the thieves, while careful in concealing their faces, had made a mistake. During the break-in, one of them had pulled out a mobile phone.
Combing through the traffic from that afternoon relayed by nearby cellular towers, the investigators were able to pinpoint a single call made from inside the museum. The receiving number’s country code was 353, and its area code was 086—an Irish mobile phone. Its owner was a resident of a small town called Rathkeale." read.atavist.com...

The criminal travellers who thought they were untouchable are now being monitored worldwide. Threatening violence to farmers for the sake of hare coursing will only result in a co-ordinated investigation exposing their true nature to an increasingly well informed public.

IS it any different from Hunting with Hawks. ?

They are not Dogs, they are Dags.

a reply to: Soloprotocol

I love hunting with dogs. I'm sure I'd get a kick from hunting with hawks. Threatening farmers with violence isn't the way.

a reply to: Kester

We have the equivalent here in the States.

Mostly they're called gypsies, though most aren't anything resembling Romany.

As with the Travellers, there's good and bad, or a mixture of the two. I've run across both.

not a fan