THE man in camouflage gear walked up to the stag and brandished his knife before plunging the blade into its neck. As the deer reared up in an attempt to escape, he stabbed it again, cutting its neck open before twisting its head around in an apparent effort to snap the spine.

The horrific sequence, which was captured on video and is now the subject of an RSPCA investigation, is at the centre of a row between pro and anti-hunt campaigners, with each accusing the other of playing some part in the animal’s death.

The video was released this weekend by the Countryside Alliance, a pro-hunt group, as evidence of the neglect of deer on a sanctuary run by the League Against Cruel Sports on Exmoor.

One of the activists who took the film claimed the brutal killing would not have been necessary if the ailing deer had been better cared for. He even claimed the killer of the stag might be linked to the league.

However, the league, on whose land the stag was stabbed, said none of its workers had anything to do with the killing and suggested the filming of the incident by pro-hunt campaigners was “very suspicious”.

The killer himself, Geoff Hayes, 67, a retired estate ranger, maintained he had no connections to either pro or anti-hunt groups. He said he had simply been driving past the sanctuary when he saw the deer in distress and decided to put it out of its misery.

The murky affair goes to the heart of a dispute that has been running for years in the hunting heartland of the West Country. The league, with support from Sir Paul McCartney, the former Beatle, has been sheltering deer since 1959 when it set up the Baronsdown sanctuary as a symbol of its commitment to ending deer hunting.

It has faced accusations that its methods of managing deer go against traditional approaches where the animals are regularly culled by shooting to prevent overpopulation. The result, say critics, is that the deer have become diseased or malnourished because of lack of food due to overcrowding.

Two years ago the league conceded that the Baronsdown deer were infected with tuberculosis and agreed to stop feeding the 300-strong herd in winter to decrease overall numbers.

But local pro-hunting farmers and landowners say the herd, though now down to about 150 animals, is still too large, which means that in their search for food they eat their own droppings and become infected with worms and flukes.

Steve Coates, a farmer and Countryside Alliance member, said he and some friends had been attempting to video an ailing and collapsed stag they believed to have been infected with parasites when a man he did not know appeared in a pick-up and walked up to the animal.

“He was on the phone; who he spoke to we don’t know. I believed he was hitched up with the league, to be honest. It was out of line what he did,” he said. “Watching the way he did it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I would say it was about a minute to a minute and a half for it to die. It was horrific.”

Coates added that after the killing the man remained with the stag until Paul Tillsley, the league’s sanctuary manager, appeared in a Land Rover about half an hour later and spoke to him. “If it had been one of us who had killed it he would have told us to bugger off. It absolutely stinks.”

Mike Hobday, a spokesman for the league, denied there had been any contact between Hayes and the league prior to the killing. Instead when Tillsley arrived at the scene, he was surprised to find a group of pro-hunt campaigners armed with video cameras together with Hayes.

“The guy [Hayes] said he was collecting antlers and he had used his knife to put it out of its misery and Paul Tillsley had no reason to imagine whether it had been done humanely or not,” said Hobday. “It seems that someone was filming a deer being savagely butchered and nobody did anything about it. It was very peculiar that when Paul turned up the stag was stiff, as if it had been dead for hours.”

Tillsley, who allowed Hayes to leave with the deer’s antlers, was so suspicious about the presence of the pro-hunt campaigners he called the police but was later told there was no evidence of any crime having been committed.

Hayes said he saw the stag by chance while driving past.

“I thought the best thing to do was to put it out of its misery. I know exactly what I’m doing and it’s a case of animal welfare.” He said he slit the deer’s throat and it was “dead in seconds”.

This weekend, after viewing the footage, the RSPCA began an inquiry into the death of the stag.

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