Cheshire Indies use drone donated by our Equipment Fund to surveil the Cheshire Hunt

Protect the Wild runs an equipment fund to support wildlife protection groups to buy the tech needed to carry out their vital work. We always like to see how its being used. So we thought we would sha

We thought we would share this video showing Cheshire Independent Hunt Monitors (Cheshire Indies – or CIHM) using their ‘eye in the sky’ to monitor what the Cheshire Hunt are getting up to.

The video, entitled 'Ladies that Brunch Hunt Foxes for Lunch', shows how vital this kind of equipment is. CIHM use the drone to keep tabs on what the Hunt is up to during a meet in a dense covert.The video, entitled 'Ladies that Brunch Hunt Foxes for Lunch', shows how vital this kind of equipment is. CIHM use the drone to keep tabs on what the Hunt is up to during a meet in a dense covert.

In hunting terminology a covert, pronounced 'cover', is a name given to a wood, spinney or patch of undergrowth. The drone enabled the Monitors to show clearly what the Hunt are up to o a wide area, and under dense cover:

Cheshire Animal Rights (CAR) campaign wrote:

"Thanks to a drone donated to Cheshire anti hunt activists from Protect the Wild, light was shed today on what The Cheshire Hunt get up to when they hide away inland.

The Hunt can be clearly seen on the aerial footage surrounding the covert and sending their hounds in to try to flush out a fox. Luckily, this time, no fox was found. According to CAR:

"The landowner Nick Brookes should be thankful too [that no fox was flushed] as he could have been held accountable under Section 3 of the Hunting Act.

But as you can see from the drone footage, it wasn't through lack of trying to find a fox."

In CAR's words, the Hunt's actions represent "pre-meditation to commit a wildlife crime".

Form

Although they may not have found anything that day, Cheshire Hunt members have already got plenty of form for killing foxes. In December 2022 Cheshire huntsman Ollie Finnegan pleaded guilty to hunting with dogs, illegal under the Hunting Act. The court saw evidence of a “pattern of offending over a period of time”. Finnegan was partly convicted by his own WhatsApp messages. The conviction came after two unsuccessful prosecutions against him for illegal hunting.

Despite all this, Finnegan is still part of the Cheshire Hunt, showing their casual disregard for wildlife protection legislation.

In fact Cheshire has been a flashpoint of the debate over illegal hunting. In 2018-19 hunt sabs and monitors witnessed five foxes killed in just a few weeks. These flagrant breaches of the Hunting Act led to a public outcry, and criticism from Chester MP Chris Matheson. The furore led to a public inquiry into hunting led by police and crime commissioner David Keane.

Support our equipment fund, or apply for a grant

CIHM aren't the only Cheshire monitoring group that we've supported with camera equipment in the past few years. We've also been able to donate body cameras to Cheshire Against Blood Sports and funded a radio upgrade for Cheshire Borderland Monitors.

Let us know if you would like to apply for a grant for equipment to protect wildlife and monitor illegal hunting in your area. As well as drones, radios and body-cameras, we can help with the costs of hardware like night-vision optics, trail-cams, camcorders and SD cards.

We won't interfere at all in what your group does, but we will offer other types of support for you and your group. Check out our 'Equipment Fund' page to find out more.

We are able to give much-needed equipment like this drone to monitors and organisations because of paid subscriptions on our Substack and donors to our Equipment Fund. While all our online content is free, any money we do receive from paid subscriptions is ring-fenced and used to put ‘eyes in the field’. It’s a simple idea – but the best ideas usually are! If you’d like to know more, we have explained it all in our post 'What do we mean by “Empowering people to protect British wildlife?'.