Farmers warn of violent hare coursing as police log 9,000 reports

Police logged nearly 9,000 reports of banned hare coursing as farmers warned the activity had become more organised, more violent and tied to intimidation across rural England. The practice is illegal under the Hunting Act 2004, yet farmers and rural officers say it still spills across fields, gates and hedgerows, with dogs used to chase and kill hares and men in speeding vehicles turning up in balaclavas.

Courses have been streamed live on social media, with bets taken on which dog will catch a hare. Landowners say the damage goes beyond wildlife crime and into property damage, trespass and fear on isolated farms.

A "borderless" operation launched in September 2021 brought together six East of England forces and Kent, and cases fell by a third in a year after that collaboration began. In Lincolnshire, police received more than 2,000 calls about hare coursing in one season, while 176 men were arrested or reported for summons in the previous season. During the busiest months of November and December, calls averaged 15 a day.

In January, about 25 speeding cars, driven by men in balaclavas, swept through Cambridgeshire farmland, leaving chaos and destruction behind them. Kent Police used a drone to try to catch hare coursers in the act, while a gamekeeper in Wiltshire found nine dead hares dumped by coursers on a rural road. Cambridgeshire police also found four dogs hidden inside a water butt.

Farmers say the same gangs are bringing theft, intimidation and criminal damage, and some fear the violence could "kill someone". In England, there were an estimated half a million brown hares left and numbers were declining.