Hunt sabotage

Hunt sabotage is the direct action that animal rights activists and animal liberation activists undertake to interfere with hunting activity.

Description
Anti-hunting campaigners are divided into hunt saboteurs and anti-hunt monitors to monitor for cruelty and report violations of animal welfare laws.
 * Interventionists usually use citronella sprays to mask the scent of the animal the hounds and hunters track or use sound and visual distractions to prevent the hunters from being successful, destroy hunting towers and enter hunting estates and farms to disarm animal traps.


 * Non-interventionists use video, photography and witness statements to support prosecution of hunters who commit offenses or to raise awareness of issues they consider show hunting as cruel, ineffective or in a bad light.

Both hunt saboteurs and independent monitors share similar techniques as both hunt saboteurs and independent monitors document and support the prosecution of those caught illegally hunting. The methods of documentation used by both saboteurs and monitors are usually videoing and photographing the illegal activities conducted by the hunt.

Criminal behavior
Both hunt supporters, hunt staff and saboteurs can on occasion be violent and unlawful with successful prosecutions against hunts and saboteurs. However since the hunt webinars of 2020 were made public with hunters describing creating ‘smokescreens’, the police have been more proactive and having received 999 calls from the public and saboteurs have attended hunts that have been reported to be illegally chasing foxes, with hunts being suspended or even shut down as a result of saboteur work.

On 8 December 2023, Paul Allman of the "Stockport Monitors" received a 5-year Criminal Behaviour Order barring him from disrupting trail hunts for the next five years. Previously, Allman was convicted and fined in March 2019 for assaulting the master of the Cheshire Hunt. Then in July 2022, Allman was convicted along with his four associates for intimidating and assaulting hunt spectators, including two adults and a girl, causing injury; they were given suspended sentences. However, in August 2023, Allman was branded a "danger to the public" for his history of violent offending, and was sentenced to 20 weeks in jail for an incident where he, along with 9 other balaclava-masked "militia", struck two men causing serious injuries.

Tim Bonner, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, said "[Allman's] actions are however representative of hunt saboteurs across the country who demonstrate this type of appalling behaviour regularly."

By country
In the United Kingdom the interventionists are usually members of the Hunt Saboteurs Association, or independent hunt saboteurs or independent anti-hunt groups while the non-interventionists are often members of the League Against Cruel Sports or, more recently, Protect Our Wild Animals or the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Every year in Spain, organisations such as Equanimal or the platform Matar por matar, non are involved in the sabotage of the Copa Nacional de Caza del Zorro (Spanish: "National Fox Hunt Cup") following the hunters making noise with megaphones to scare foxes and preventing them from being killed.