29/12/2025
https://www.facebook.com/share/16vhDnLscN/
Wise words written by Tom H. Once a huntsman. Now a hunt saboteur.
“Shame more will not do the same……”
I’ve gone back and forth about whether to post this. I know some people will be angry. Some will think I’ve lost my mind. Some will quietly unfriend me and never say why. That’s fine. I’m used to that now.
I grew up in hunting. Not watching it from the outside — in it. Kennels, horses, hounds, all of it. I was on a horse before I could properly understand what was going on around me. By my late teens I was working days, then full-time. Red coat, horn, the lot. It wasn’t something you questioned. You’re brought up to see it as normal. Necessary. Just “how things are done”.
I believed all of it. I repeated all the usual lines. We were legal. We were misunderstood. Anyone who opposed us didn’t know what they were talking about. City people. Trouble-makers. I laughed at videos. I dismissed things I didn’t want to look at properly. I told myself that anything unpleasant was either exaggerated or someone else’s fault.
That was my opinion, and I clung to it for a long time.
After the ban, nothing really changed in the way we talked about it. We just learned new words. “Trail.” “Accidental.” “Unfortunate.” The same country, the same hounds, the same excuses. If something went wrong, there was always a reason. If someone questioned it, they were the problem.
But over time, it started to sit badly with me.
It wasn’t one big moment where everything suddenly clicked. It was lots of small things. Things you push down because you don’t want to be the awkward one. The way the law was treated like an inconvenience rather than something to follow. The way everyone knew where the fox had gone, but no one would say it out loud. The way “we don’t do that anymore” somehow always turned into “that was an accident”.
What really changed things for me was finally paying attention to the people I’d been told to hate.
Hunt saboteurs.
I expected shouting. Abuse. Ignorance. What I actually found was footage, dates, maps, and people who knew the law better than most of the people breaking it. I saw my own hunt from the outside for the first time. Not through the stories we told ourselves, but through what was actually happening.
And once you see that, you can’t unsee it.
I realised how much effort goes into looking legal rather than being legal. How much energy is spent managing optics instead of welfare. How quickly “community” disappears when you stop going along with things. How hounds are talked about as family, right up until they’re inconvenient.
That was hard to sit with.
Since stepping away, I’ve watched it all from the outside. Same patterns. Same statements. Same claims that nothing ever happens, alongside constant demands to be left alone to carry on. Same stories about persecution, never any accountability.
Do I think fox hunting should be allowed? No. If I’m honest, I don’t think I ever really did — I just didn’t let myself think about it.
Do I think trail hunting works as an alternative? No. I now see it for what it is. A cover that relies on confusion, weak enforcement, and people not looking too closely.
I hear a lot about abuse, threats and intimidation — always going one way. What I didn’t hear about when I was inside was the assaults brushed off, the evidence ignored, the intimidation faced by monitors, or the foxes that were never supposed to be there. I have seen foxes killed. I have seen hounds injured. I have seen lies told without hesitation.
None of that disappears because someone’s boots are polished or their yard is tidy.
I don’t have all the answers. I’m not pretending to be perfect, or better than anyone else. I just know now that a lot of what you read in carefully written testimonials doesn’t match the reality of hunting in England in 2025.
All I would ask is this — if you genuinely care about animal welfare, don’t just listen to one side. Don’t just visit kennels on a good day. Watch the footage. Read the law. Pay attention to what keeps happening despite the reassurances.
Then make up your own mind.
