Wildlife Crime in Scotland 2022

Hunting with dogs - additional breakdown

This section highlights offences under the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act 2002. Section 1 of the 2002 Act prohibits the deliberate hunting of a wild mammal with a dog (subject to certain exceptions). The Act is most commonly used in connection with hare coursing, although it has also been used for incidents relating to foxes, deer and badgers. It does not prohibit the hunting of rabbits or rats by dogs. This legislation has now been overtaken by the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Act 2023. However, as this legislation did not come into effect until October 2023, it was not in place during this reporting period.

Recorded crimes

Figure 22: Hunting with dogs offences decreased from 85 in 2020-21 to 34 in 2021-22

Hunting with dogs offences, 2017-18 to 2021-22

 

Figure 22 shows the number of offences that involved hunting with dogs and is a further breakdown of the data already presented earlier in this section of the report (Wildlife crime priority areas). The total of 34 hunting with dogs offences identified in 2021-22 was considerably lower than the 85 offences identified the previous year although the reason for the peak in 2020-21 is not clear. The vast majority (32 of 34) of the hunting with dogs offences in 2021-22 were included in the poaching and coursing data presented earlier, with the remaining 2 offences relating to the hunting of foxesand included within "not related to a priority area". The majority (25 offences) of hunting with dogs offences in 2021-22 were for hare coursing, and 7 were for deer coursing (including 1 offence which also included hares). There were 2 hunting with dogs offences categorized as fox hunting, similar to the average in the last 5 years of 2-3 offences per year.

 

Further detail: on hunting with dogs offences by police division, target species and time of year is provided in tables 35 and 36 of the Tables supporting document.