Hunting fans draw up ban action plans

Hunt masters, meeting yesterday to discuss last week's decision to ban the activity, said landowners would be "bloody minded" when bodies such as utility engineers, council officials or the Army asked for permission to access their property.

But they said they would stop short of breaking the law.

About 200 pro-hunting campaigners gathered in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, yesterday to decide plans for co-ordinated civil disobedience and be updated on legal challenges to the ban.

Peter Dennis, farmer and master of the Hurworth Hunt, at West Rounton, near Northallerton, is planning to refuse access to his land.

John Snaith, chairman of the Zetland Hunt, which hunts along the borders of North Yorkshire and County Durham, said: "We may be a little bloody minded when it comes to people like water and electricity companies getting access to our land. They may find things a little awkward.

"But we intend to keep within the law. It is essential that we keep the public on our side and we keep working with the police."

Mr Snaith said the ban meant the present hunting season would be cut short by about two weeks.

But he said there were no plans yet to lay-off hunt workers or disband hound packs.

Campaigners said the aim of the meeting of the Masters of Foxhounds Association and the Council of Hunting Associations, in Yorkshire, was to ensure individual hunts acted in unison, once the ban came into effect on February 18.

Similar meetings are being held in other regions across the country.

A spokesman for the Countryside Alliance said yesterday its two-pronged legal attack on the ban, through a challenge to the Parliament Act and to the European Court of Human Rights, was continuing.

A survey in a national newspaper yesterday found 70 per cent of the public believed the police should not enforce the ban on hunting.

The opinion poll found the majority of people thought officers should concentrate on other crimes once hunting with hounds becomes illegal.