‘We will fight to continue our rural way of life’

Hundreds of people turned out at Melton Mowbray Livestock Market as mounted hunt members arrived for refreshments before doing a couple of loops around the market buildings behind their pack of hounds.

Hunts have met in the Melton area for about 350 years and for the last 40 years there has been an annual New Year meet in the town centre – the Belvoir, Quorn and Cottesmore Hunts gather on a rota basis each year.

And the Belvoir’s Tom Kingston gave a rallying call at the latest meet, telling the large crowds: “I do remain confident that next year, and in future years to come, we will still be here and we will fight and we will continue our way of life.”

Hunting foxes and other wild mammals was banned in 2004 but the hunts have continued to trail hunt through the countryside by following scent of an animal.

However the government announced last month it intended to ban trail hunting because it says the practice is ‘a smokescreen’ for continuing to use hounds to kill foxes.

It is backed by the League Against Cruel Sports, which has produced figures showing that 264 reports were made of illegal hunting since the start of August and 211 where foxes were observed to have been followed – those numbers, it says, increased from 2024.

But the Countryside Alliance says that in the last 20 years less than 50 convictions under the Hunting Act involving packs of hounds have been made and that trail hunting remains vital to the rural economy.

Mr Kingston attacked the government’s stance on trail hunting in his speech, saying: “This isn’t about foxes anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time.

“This is about the countryside culture being erased bit by bit.

“First it was hunting, then trail hunting and next it will be shooting, then racing, then farming practices.”

He added: “Trail hunting supports real people, real farms, farmers, farriers, grooms, vets, feed merchants and small rural family businesses.

“Families who have worked on the land for generations.

“These aren’t elite pastimes, these are working lives.

“The countryside needs to stand together, now more than ever.

“Because once this way of life is gone, it won’t come back.”

Melton and Syston MP, Edward Argar, who attended the hunt meeting, told the Melton Times afterwards: “While I do respect the strength and sincerity of views on both sides of this debate, I remain firmly opposed to Labour’s proposed trail hunting ban.

“Not just on grounds of rural traditions and a rural way of life – important though they are – but because this ban ignores the lives and rural livelihoods that it would affect.

"Not just those employed directly by hunts, but a whole range of rural industries and crafts, like saddlers, farriers, grooms, and many more for whom the hunts generate much needed business and jobs locally.

“Lets be clear, this proposed ban isn’t about animal welfare, and it certainly ignores the welfare of the hounds; it is about a government once again showing it doesn’t understand the countryside, or worse, doesn’t even appear to care about it.”