The century old Ledbury Hunt holds it's traditional Boxing Day meet
It is reported that around 250,000 hunt supporters turned out to support the traditional Boxing Day meets.
Across the country there were 300 legal hunts, which, due to current hunting laws, must now follow the trail of a fox rather than chasing it.
However the mood of many of the hunt supporters is that there may be a change in legislation soon to the more traditional hunting version.
Agriculture Minister Jim Paice has called for the hunting ban introduced by Labour to be repealed, saying it ‘simply doesn’t work’. The Government has promised MPs a vote on whether to legislate to repeal the Hunting Act, which came into force in 2005.
With around 20 Tory MPs and 40 Lib Dems oppose repealing the act, means any vote would be finely balanced.
Alice Barnard, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, said ‘the numbers are incredibly tight but more and more people are supporting repeal’.
‘This piece of legislation is one of the most confusing and illiberal on the statute book,’ she said.
The RSPCA’s David Bowles said there was no need for repeal because the Act had worked – hunting was more popular than ever, he said, without foxes being ripped ‘limb from limb’.
