THE government’s attempt to stamp out hunting has flopped, with hundreds of packs regularly flouting the ban, according to both supporters and opponents of field sports.

As the new fox-hunting season begins this weekend – three years after the passing of the Hunting Act – it has emerged that there are more people pursuing wild animals with hounds than ever before.

Many hunts have reported record membership as the government attack on hunting brought a surge of support. Since the ban, the number of hunts has increased. The current total of 314 includes two – the Dumfriesshire and Stewartry Foxhounds and the Private Pack – which did not exist before the act.

Meanwhile, half the 10 prosecutions brought under the act have not even been against formal fox or stag hunts. The most recent conviction, secured last month, was against a Mersey-side gang hunting rats.

The police have made it clear that they do not see enforcing the hunting ban as a priority and most of the cases that have come to court have been private prosecutions.

Mike Hobday of the League Against Cruel Sports, whose monitoring of West Country hunts has resulted in two of the three successful prosecutions against registered hunts, said: “These court cases are the tip of the iceberg. There are a number of hunts whose lawbreaking is pretty persistent.”

A leading hunt insider was even more frank, saying: “The truth is that everything is as it was with hunting going on as usual. Out on private land, in the undergrowth it’s impossible for anyone from the outside to know what is going on.

“The only hunts being monitored by the saboteurs are those in the home counties and on Exmoor. The rest of them can do what they like as far as anyone knowing anything about it.”

Tim Bonner, spokesman on hunting for the Countryside Alliance, said the act was “unenforceable ”.

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