A stunning and disturbing video filmed by hunt saboteurs – which helped trigger the demise of a Midlands fox hunt

Click play and you’ll rapidly feel like you’ve been sucked into one of the most visceral movies ever made, capturing nature red in tooth and claw – and by that, we mean human nature.

The camera, in the hands of hunt saboteurs protesting a Midlands fox hunt, moves so frenetically and so fast that it might give you whiplash, while also capturing loud live sound that includes screaming. All of this follows a fox being chased by hounds and riders into a semi-enclosed space – and the violent reaction of some hunters to the saboteurs filming. Things very fast get really quite violent.

This stunning video exemplifies the power of digital filmmaking and its online distribution to actualise one of the things cine-film and analogue videotape had merely promised: the moving image’s ability both to record and to protest what is otherwise unseen and in so doing enable change in the world offscreen. While the bulk of the video consists of raw footage, latter parts constructed in the editing room interpret and update what was witnessed, using various editing effects. The Atherstone Hunt has since folded and this filmic encounter was regularly cited as a key factor in its demise.

Activists from West Midlands Hunt Saboteurs track and film the activity of the Atherstone Hunt (a Fox Hunting group) on 28th February 2015. After witnessing a fox being chased by a pack of hounds encouraged by a huntsman (which is illegal under the Hunting Act 2004), a saboteur tries to film and intervene and is attacked by hunters, firstly by being ridden into and pinned against a wall by a huntsman on horseback and then being attacked from behind by a hunt supporter who then attacks the saboteur filming.

From the YouTube Description:

"This video perfectly sums up fox hunting. A fox closely chased by hounds and violence used against anyone who trys to stop them or trys to film them.

On the 28th February 2015 we filmed a fox being chased out of a hedgerow and right into the path of the Atherstone Hunt huntsman Stuart Barton. The fox was followed by the full pack of hounds who were inches away from the fox.

Instead of stopping the hounds Barton rides his horse into a hunt saboteur who had run forward to help the fox. The saboteur is pinned up against the wall by Bartons horse.

The same saboteur is then attacked from behind by Atherstone Hunt supporter Laura Caines. Caines then attacks a second hunt saboteur who had just filmed her attacking the first sab. She tried to steal the camcorder and dug her nails into the cheek of the saboteur making it bleed.

Cains was found guilty of two counts of assault by beating.

Leicestershire Police refused to charge huntsman Stuart Barton with illegal hunting or for attacking the saboteur by using his horse as a weapon."