Mathew Latta was making lunch on his remote Cambridgeshire farm when the peace was shattered by the sound of loud exhausts. Running to the window, he saw a convoy of more than a dozen 4x4s heading towards his property. His iron gates were cut open with an angle grinder and concrete blocks shoved aside to clear the path.
The vehicles drove straight over his fields, tearing up crops and skirting the fence by the family’s garden. More than 70 people got out – men dressed in military fatigues and balaclavas, cheering and playing music. Dogs were brought out on leads and began to hunt hares.
“Hare coursing gangs trapped a family for three hours as police failed to respond, BBC finds.”
“They were all stood up on their cars with binoculars,” Latta said. “I would say this is 100% a properly organised coursing event, with competitors and competitive dogs. People watching the course – and watching and betting on that sport. It was quite terrifying.”
Latta and his family were trapped inside their home. His daughter, then aged seven, kept asking: “Are these men gonna come inside, daddy?” They called police repeatedly, but nobody came. More than three hours later, the bloodsport ended and the crowd dispersed, leaving four cars behind – one a burnt-out wreck. Earlier that day, the convoy had rampaged through a 20-mile stretch of the county, forcing other cars off the road and even robbing a petrol station.
This is the modern reality of hare coursing – an ancient sport where dogs such as greyhounds or lurchers chase hares, with points awarded for twists and turns as well as the kill. Banned in the UK in 2005, it has gone underground. The BBC has found police received nearly 9,000 reports of the practice, and farmers speak of being threatened by balaclava-clad coursers at night.
The investigation began after dead animals were mysteriously dumped in two Hampshire villages in 2024. In Awbridge, more than 20 carcasses – mostly hares and rabbits, along with a muntjac deer with a severed head – were strewn outside a primary school, reducing children to tears. Seven miles north, in Broughton, about 50 hares were scattered near the village shop entrance, with blood smeared on the doors and a dead barn owl and kestrel tied to the door handles.
The incidents expose a hidden world of illegal hunts that continues to terrorise rural communities, with police seemingly unable or unwilling to stop it.