Hunting with Dogs

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 does not cover the period up to March 2023 reported below.

There were 40 hunting with dogs offences recorded in 2022-23.
Figure 21: Hunting with dogs offences, 2018-19 to 2022-23.

Figure 21 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 40 hunting with dogs offences recorded in  2022-23 was broadly similar to the previous 5 years, with the exception of the peak of 85 offences in 2020-21. The vast majority (39 of 40)  of the hunting with dogs offences in 2021-22 were included in the poaching and coursing data presented earlier, with the remaining offence being for the hunting of foxes and included within "not related to a priority area".

The majority of hunting with dogs offences in 2022-23 were for hare coursing (31) with the other offences targetting deer (6), rabbits (1), foxes (1) and unknown wildlife (1).

Further detail: on hunting with dogs offences by police division, target species and time of year is provided in Tables 47 and 48 of the Tables supporting document.