BBC South Investigations
Hare coursing has long roots in English history. Originally used for hunting, and later sport, it sees dogs chasing hares across rural fields. But once just a man and his dog, it has increasing become the “sport of choice” for criminal gangs, with speeding vehicles driven by men in balaclavas sweeping through the countryside.
While police say the problem is being taken more seriously than ever before, some farmers are warning it is only a matter of time before someone is killed.
“These are people who would quite happily wipe you off the face of the earth without a second glance,” one farmer told the BBC.
He and his wife have been describing the harrowing moment a hare coursing gang arrived after dark on their remote farm just off Salisbury Plain.
“We could hear shouting and revving all over the place, our plan had been to go up the top of the hill to see how many there were and where, so we could give a better location to police,” he said.
The couple had not meant to confront the visitors, but they were quickly surrounded by half a dozen vehicles.
“I got out and I started shouting and roaring at them, just how dare people come and do this to our business, to our home,” the farmer said.
“How dare you come and threaten us.”
In a video filmed by one of those involved, the gang can be heard taunting the couple and while some urge others to leave the farmer alone, ballbearings from slingshots can be heard hitting the side of the farmer’s vehicle before it is rammed.
The gang were using the farmer’s field for the illegal sport of hare coursing – which was outlawed in the UK under the Hunting Act 2004 and which police forces across the country say is increasingly carried out by organised and dangerous criminals.
The farmer’s wife remained in the car on the phone to Wiltshire Police while the gang “rammed” them two or three times.
“They didn’t care if you had stood there or not, they would have just run you over,” she said.
The BBC has agreed not to identify the Wiltshire couple, who are still dealing with the trauma of what happened in November 2024.
HandoutOne man was initially arrested and later released, but with no faces to identify anyone and cloned number plates on the vehicles involved, the others got away.
After the incident the farmer suffered a mental health crisis and said he briefly considered taking his own life – before quickly seeking support from a mental health helpline.
The couple said they wanted to share their story so that people realise what rural communities are up against.
“You feel very alone and isolated,” the farmer’s wife said.
“When someone is screaming down the phone at 999 ‘hare coursing is going on’, it is not some old boy with a dog, it is serious crime and these people are dangerous.”
The couple are full of praise for the local rural police team who have supported them, but said there are far too few officers assigned to looking into the problem.
Another farmer, David Lemon, said hare coursing has become like “guerrilla warfare” in his area on the Wiltshire-Hampshire border.
“We get visited by hare coursers probably every other day,” Mr Lemon said.
“There’s been a huge increase in their willingness to commit violence to farmers and gamekeepers, anybody who tries to stop them doing what they do.”
Once the harvest has cleared the fields, the vast and remote chalk hills attract the hare coursers and poachers. The season runs from the end of the harvest until the spring, before the crops get too high.
“In the old days they used to run away, now they run towards you,” said the third-generation farmer, who worries where things are heading.
“I just think a farmer will overreact, or they [the gangs] will think it’s fun and games and take it too far,” Mr Lemon said.
“This is going to end in a mess and I genuinely think someone is going to be, dare I say, killed.”
“This is the reality of what rural communities are dealing with and they are terrified,” said Claire Wright, from the Country Land and Business Association (CLA).
The CLA represents thousands of small rural businesses and Ms Wright described to the BBC incidents of gamekeepers who have been beaten up.
“One of our members had his nose broken with an iron bar when he just got in the way accidentally,” she said.
Another was spat at in the face by a man who claimed to have HIV, she added.
The CLA said farmers can help protect their property by digging ditches to make it harder for vehicles to get onto fields, and it is urging communities to alert police and neighbours to anything suspicious.
But police bosses are balancing resources against other serious crime – and because the official crime statistics do not specifically record hare coursing, there is little reliable data to establish the true scale of the problem.
“The hardcore few are doubling down on their tactics, the crime they are committing is far more extreme than it used to be,” said Ch Insp Kevin Lacks-Kelly, the head of the National Wildlife Crime Unit.
“These are criminals and in their pastime this is their sport of choice”, with the majority of those caught being linked to a wide range of other serious and organised crime, he added.
‘The criminal underbelly’
The chief inspector said that betting rings and the selling of dogs can see “tens and tens of thousands of pounds” exchanging hands each time.
His unit works with police forces across the country to improve training and coordinate responses, which he said is finally “lifting the lid on the criminal underbelly of hare coursing”.
Police forces like Wiltshire have been diverting more resources into tackling rural crime, with more than a dozen arrests for hare coursing in the first two months of this year.
“We now have a completely different approach to rural crime than we’ve had for years,” said Wiltshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Philip Wilkinson, who said it is now considered “a high priority”.
In practice, the PCC says, this means the small rural crime team “can now call on the whole force as their cavalry”, from drones to road policing to armed response.
Introducing a joint operation with Thames Valley, Hampshire and Gloucestershire police forces to target suspected offenders earlier this month, he added: “This is a national threat we are trying to deal with.”
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