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Men 2024, a village in Hampshire was shocked by something very disturbing. A pile of dead animals had been dumped outside the school, and there was blood on the streets before the children’s classes started for the day. There were 20 carcasses, including rabbits, hares, jackals and a decapitated deer. The village was bewildered, and the big question was: Why?
The husband-and-wife team of investigative journalists Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor – the duo behind the award-winning BBC podcast series, as well as the upcoming documentary, Posted – found themselves wondering the same thing. Their new 10-part podcast, Posted: Dead Rabbit, explores this and finds them entering the dark world of illegal blood sports. In particular, chasing rabbits – where dogs hunt rabbits to kill them, which has been happening banned in the UK since 2005 – and its links to gangs and dangerous, violent individuals who are terrorizing communities across the country.
He soon uncovers many incidents of butchered meat. They find lambs hanged from a group with their throats cut and 50 dead animals placed in the doorway of a farm shop with their blood smeared on the windows. There are also talks of possible satanic activities, but what unites them is that these were threats: threatening methods of hunting illegal rabbits to bring fear into the communities where they operate.
As part of the investigation, they contact someone who knows more about the threat: Chris Packham. The wildlife exhibitor, author and animal rights activist has been attacked several times, finding everything from dead animals to human excrement on his doorstep.
All three performed at the Crucible theater in Sheffield after showing the first episode on. Sheffield DocFest. “I knew it was going on but I didn’t know the extent of it,” says Packham, who has been fighting rabbits for years. In the podcast he describes what he uncovers as “hidden and terrifying…painful”.
However, he is aware of the lengths some people will go to suppress the conscious voice of nature. In 2021, someone burned his car at his home. “Am I afraid of being repaid?” With Packham in mind, I asked him if he was worried about making this podcast. “Well, they blew up my house—there’s not much they can do. I’m always upset about injustice and if the truth must be told, then I must be at the entrance to that truth. I can’t be happy with willful blindness.” If anything, Packham seems to be getting the blame for chasing down the culprits. “I love the thrill of the chase. I should have been a hunter,” he joked at one point in the series, when he was in the crowd. “Hunting bad guys.”
The trio uncovers a nefarious world run by criminals where the most successful and lucrative rabbit training competitions are held. They find people betting on the dark web from China to the US, while innocent farmers who own farms are threatened, threatened, attacked and threatened. “Mafia-esque,” is how Taylor describes it on the podcast. It has become so common that they reveal that there have been over 8,500 cases of illegal rabbit poaching reported to the police in the past three years. Some farmers are being subjected to constant abuse and violence to the point of committing suicide. “They don’t care,” said Packham of the hunters. “They have crossed the line where there is no obedience to the law.”
What happens is groups of Balaclava-clad men in four-by-four vans patrol the fields, breaking and looting their land shamelessly. The police have often been so slow to respond or so indifferent that small, often rural and remote, communities live in fear. Dead animals are just the tip of the iceberg. People who have challenged the hunters have been hospitalized with broken legs and collapsed lungs, received threats of rape, had bricks thrown through their windows, threatened child abuse and had their dogs stolen and skinned.
It’s big money too. The sport’s top dogs – the most lethal – are sold for £50,000 and there is a huge competition with its own trophy called the Super 8 cup. “We thought it was a load of rubbish,” says Ashby, of the cup. “I thought the criminals were playing tricks, so I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. It was this big mug with these beautiful dogs on it.”
For Taylor, it’s a bad sign of how shameless the industry is. He said: “This is a symbol of the courage of all. “This is not something hidden in the corners of the streets. They’re out there and they’re proud – they don’t care.” Part of the research also shows a change in the number of hunters, since young people from different areas are participating, and changes in the media are common. “People have an image of the rabbit as a strange, old-world search,” says Taylor. But it will become more associated with criminals and violent people.
The podcast also shows how it is spreading, with damage to properties and businesses being reported from Essex to North Yorkshire. Packham said: “Organized crime is seen as an urban thing. “This is a revelation that is happening in the countryside.” It has become so entrenched in certain areas that there are concerns about how it really goes in. Ashby said: “A police officer and a crime boss told us that they fear they are now within the police force. “And he’s noticed that a lot of the work he’s doing for them doesn’t seem to be going well. He said he thinks the police should be looking more internally.
For Ashby, the list isn’t just about driving itself but what it represents about where we are as a society. “It’s about the growth of crime in the UK and our relationship with the environment,” he says. “We have a unique British opinion that something like the ivory trade is dangerous and cannot be done on this coast. But this is an open area where there is a trade in nature and dangerous methods, which people ignore. It is our job to remind people that this is very serious.”
