BY NIGEL BEAN & PAUL READ

Last week’s highly revealing video produced by Fields Sports TV and presented by Charlie Jacoby (link at bottom of this article) could not have come at a more appropriate time. It is a game changer. On the Monday before its release, Country Squire Magazine covered a Facebook appeal by Derbyshire police – they were advising hunt saboteurs and their supporters to stop reporting crime from highly-edited videos they had watched on Facebook and other social media websites. These faked videos were being used to draw in donations from angry members of the public – having their good money conned out of them.

The reporting of “crimes” based on faked videos has been a ploy of the antis for a while now. A ploy to bolster the credibility of “reported” illegal hunting figures, so anti-hunt groups can claim illegal hunting has increased and hit heart not head with these videos when they are questioned. This is a disgraceful, predetermined strategy to mislead the public and some politicians – providing those in power with faked statistical and video evidence to take action against hunting, as well as extracting donations from the wallets of the ‘duped’ public who get massively concerned by these videos.

One of the charities which BBC Presenter and anti, Chris Packham, has actively promoted to the public by suggesting they join as members unashamedly use these massaged stats:

From the League Against Cruel Sports Website:

“The figures come from reports by the public into the League’s Animal Crimewatch service, reports by monitoring and saboteur groups posted on Facebook, and from professional investigators employed by the League to monitor hunts”

So Derbyshire police have warned those likely to be duped on Facebook, but what about the professional investigators the League employs to monitor hunts – or the wildlife crime investigation unit at the RSPB led by Ian Thomson? Surely Chris Packham can have faith in their data collection? After all, Packham’s narrative implies illegal hunting and raptor persecution is solely the preserve of field sports enthusiasts and this must come from a source with more credibility than those pushing doctored Facebook stats and dodgy footage?

Seemingly not.

Charlie Jacoby reported on a highly suspicious ‘spike’ in illegal raptor persecution just before Packham and the coalition called Revive believed Prof Alan Werrity was going to report his review finding into moorland management. Revive are a coalition against driven grouse shooting comprising most notably of a raptor persecution group, One Kind, campaigning alongside The League Against Cruel Sports. One Kind have been exposed as propagandists by Jacoby when, amusingly, he faked a video of his own and they suggested publishing it online rather than first going to the police about what appeared to be its illegal contents – they were veritably busted and it’s odd they have not been closed down.

The Fields Sports TV documentary seriously compromised the video Chris Packham made in July 2019 titled ‘Hen harriers suffers savage brutality’. Packham’s video catalogues the death of one of the harriers in this suspicious ‘spike’ of persecutions on the Lead Hills shooting estate. All of Packham’s cronies were included in the video – Mark Raffety Head of Investigation at the SSPCA, Bob Elliot, Director of One Kind and Robbie Marlsand of the League Against Cruel Sports, Andy Wightman MSP,  Superintendent Nick Lyall, Chair of the Raptor Persecution Group and the aforementioned Ian Thomson.

Watch the seriously compromised video (from 8 mins). It is of Hollywood quality and the alleged lawbreaker steps into frame like Cary Grant. It’s blatantly obvious it’s a fake.

If this was indeed set up – as the documentary strongly suggests – then what other fakery have the antis been relying on? Dead birds on a gate perhaps?

We wrote to Prof Alan Werrity in Oct 2018 and told him the raptor persecutions these days are just as likely from the antis in an attempt to smear field sports. Werrity delayed his review much to the disappointment of the antis.

And what about Spiker aka hunt monitor Terry Hill? Terry features prominently in the Field Sports TV documentary and has worked in the past for the League Against Cruel Sports, a fact not mentioned by the presenter Charlie Jacoby. We also know Hill was sent to Scotland on the orders of Robbie Marsland to capture illegal hunting footage and present that as evidence to encourage the Scottish Parliament to implement a total ban. Both Terry and the League already have highly tainted backgrounds in making videos then releasing them at important times during a campaign in a bid to sway political opinion in their favour. This behaviour goes back decades.

Some examples?

26^th June 1998, one month before the Michael Foster hunt ban bill is discussed in parliament:

https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/7968725.caged-fox-cubs-fury/

Comments of interest:

“An undercover investigator staked the place out on Tuesday morning and found a fresh chicken in the cage, got video footage and photographs.”

Mr Haigh said: “There’s always the possibility that this whole incident is a set-up so until this committee of inquiry has reported, I can’t make any”

Ryedale’s Conservative MP John Greenway said he could not believe the hunt was responsible for rearing cubs, and suggested the man-made earth was the work of an individual.

23^rd March 2004, 6 months before the bill to ban hunting returns to parliament:

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/welsh-hunt-barbaric-2446555

Douglas Batchelor, chief executive of the League Against Cruel Sports, called the footage “sickening” and appealed to the Government to completely outlaw fox hunting and baiting by dogs.

A spokesman on behalf of the Mid Wales pack said last night that members had not been allowed to see an unedited version of the film, and they suspected it had been highly edited.

Of course these two incidents were long ago, and folk were not used to video cameras and the propaganda potential they had, but even back then questions were being asked. So what happened when we got cameras and could film Terry in Scotland in his attempt to show illegal hunting? And remember, if you flush foxes in Scotland you must have guns present to shoot the foxes, if not the law has been broken. So clearly the deal is to obtain film showing no guns present.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2383499858413130

 Just after that the 2nd gun was filmed, Terry was filmed passing a third gunmen:

https://youtu.be/AWQ13Xo6EG0

The antis’ investigators are already shamed. Mere propagandists – untalented ones at that. There are questions that the police need now to be asking:

• Why is Terry Hill still producing faked material?
• Why are the antis – sometimes registered as charities – using faked material to con the public into parting with donations?
• How much does Chris Packham know about this fraud? His face on these groups campaigns gives them credibility.

Using faked material to change the law is disgraceful. Using faked material to con the Great British public is unforgiveable.

A police investigation is called for and we stand ready to provide files of evidence on these crooks.

Here’s the Jacoby film below: