Hunters vow to keep up chase
LONDON, England -- Thousands of British hunters vowed to keep up the chase Friday after hunting with dogs became illegal in England and Wales.
The Countryside Alliance said that hunts would be out Saturday, when they will try to keep within the law by drag hunting or flushing out foxes and shooting them.
While some packs said they would keep within the bounds of the Act -- which outlaws hunting for foxes, deer and hares in England and Wales --there were reports that others are prepared to ignore it, and that the police will be hard pressed to enforce the ban, the UK's Press Association reported.
Hunting communities are furious at the ban, which came into effect at midnight Thursday/Friday and ended 300 years of British countryside tradition.
The show of defiance came after the UK Court of Appeal ruled Thursday that the ban, which came into effect at midnight, must go ahead.
The alliance estimates some 400,000 people will defy the ban by attending hunts on Saturday, dwarfing the traditional December 26 meets, normally the busiest in the calendar which attracted 275,000 people last year.
New Hunting Act
After seven years of heated debate, Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government finally forced the ban through parliament last November after the upper chamber, the unelected House of Lords, repeatedly opposed it.
Under the new Hunting Act, riders will still be able to gather to exercise their hounds, hunt rats and rabbits and even flush out foxes with only two hounds for a hunter to shoot.
"There is no ban on hunting -- you can still go hunting," Delly Everard, a member of a hunt in the west of England, told Reuters.
She said huntsmen will gather with their packs of hounds, up to 30-strong, and go drag-hunting, where the dogs follow a scent laid out by dragging a fox's carcass along the ground.
"Accidents happen though," she said. "The hounds don't understand that legally they are not allowed to hunt and kill foxes from Saturday.
"They have had hundreds of years of hunting and now they are expected to understand that it's OK to kill a rabbit but not a hare?"
Anti-hunt groups also say their work is not over.
The League Against Cruel Sports has set up monitoring groups to video hunt meets and hand over evidence to the police of any law-breaking.
"The pro-hunt lobby have always said they are law abiding citizens, and now is their chance to prove that," a spokesman told Reuters.
Protests have turned increasingly violent. On Monday, police arrested demonstrators at a hare coursing event after the sides hurled abuse and rocks at each other.
Police have say they will have to rely on evidence collected by anti-hunt groups to enforce the law.
