Wildlife Crime in Scotland 2022

Poaching and coursing

Poaching involves the taking of deer, fish or other game without permission, or using unlawful methods. Coursing is the hunting of animals with dogs.

Recorded crimes

Figure 19: During 2021-22, 101 poaching and coursing offences were recorded by Police Scotland, compared to 212 offences in 2020-21.

Police Scotland disaggregated offence data for poaching and coursing 2017-18 to 2021-22.

As shown in Figure 19, poaching and coursing offences had increased significantly in 2020-21 (212 offences) but dropped back down to 101 offences in 2021-22, similar to the level seen in the three years from 2017-18 to 2019-20. The reason for this was not clear from the available data.

Figure 20: During 2021-22, there were 47 offences concerning fish poaching, and 54 related to poaching and coursing of deer, hares and rabbits.

Police Scotland disaggregated offence data for poaching and coursing 2021-22.

Figure 20 provides the breakdown of poaching and coursing offences in 2021-22 by species. The area in the chart is proportional to the number of offences and shows that approximately half of the offences were related to poaching of fish (47 offences, 47%) and the remainder related to poaching and coursing of hares (26 offences, 26%), deer (25 offences, 25%) and rabbits (3 offences, 3%).

Further detail: on poaching and coursing offences by target species, police division and time of year is included in tables 30 and 31 of the Tables supporting document.