To have gut reaction something's off.

[Carouselfish]

Live rurally. Lane with approx. 30 houses spread out over a mile, leading to small village (no shops) one way and main road the other way. Sunday, high snow banks on sides of road and slush all over. Driving into town, third of way up the lane, had to squeeze past group of 8 men, all about early thirties, very grumpy looking, with collection of dogs, mastiff, couple of lurchers, several little black terriers, making their way down towards the village.
I know it sounds very League of Gentlemen, but they weren't from the area, didn't have guns so not poaching, weren't dressed in wellies or walking boots or anything (I was passenger so had time to look). Would you just say large group of male friends who all have dogs out for a Sunday afternoon stroll somewhere random that was making them all very grumpy or what? It just seemed weird.
DP has suggested dognappers giving their stolen dogs a toilet break! I would have said poachers looking for places to come back to, especially as in the last couple of months have had two late at night incidences in the neighbouring field of people creeping about with dogs. But...they didn't look at all 'countryish'. Maybe those have made me paranoid...
MN verdict?

They wouldn't need mastiffs for coursing. What were they wearing?

Possibly the Mastiff was a Bullhound, Lucher X.

BoreOfWhabylon

At worst it was lightly sarcastic. Sorry you can't cope.

PhelanThePain

It's not 'strange' to think the level of prejudice on this thread is...well, strange.

okay pengggwn

Lurchers and terriers though. Maybe the mastiff comes along for the lolz. Or to finish the hare off? Hares are huge.

@Sugar , a lot of people assume it is illegal due to its popularity with criminals. You certainly aren't alone in assuming that.

The reason the police take so much interest in it is the presence of firearms which bumps the crime of trespass up quite a few notches to one of 'trespass with a firearm'.

Where I live I might well suspect hair coursing because of the lurchers.. But the lack of boots would surprise me.

iIlegal fox hunt. There used to be one every fourth Sunday where we walked our dogs. Sometimes they would ask if we had seen a fox and we would always point them in the opposite direction from the terrified fox.

It doesn’t sound like hare coursing to me actually. We get hare coursers on our land all the time. They are normally in a car tearing through the fields, and not normally such a big group of them.

If you know the local farmers, it’s worth mentioning it to them though. We have a Whatsapp group which have rural police connected to it which we comment on if we see something suspicious. They may have something similar.

Stay well out of the way and contact your local rural police. They are hare coursing or conducting other illegal bloodsports. Either way they need shifting and you need to steer clear. These people are horrific. My friend is a farmer and when he approached a group of them they followed him back to the farm and said they would nail his doors shut and burn down his house with his family inside if he approached them again. Absolutely horrendous and these bastards need locking up.

Dog fighting?

Hmm. I think innocent actually. No ferrets, No boots and a random mastiff all point to a possible group of ill prepared foot wear wise walkers. No hare courser would be stupid enough to attempt to course hares in the snow without boots. And what would the mastiff be doing!?

Hmm. I think innocent actually. No ferrets, No boots and a random mastiff all point to a possible group of ill prepared foot wear wise walkers. No hare courser would be stupid enough to attempt to course hares in the snow without boots. And what would the mastiff be doing!?

Being a pedant, they wouldn’t be “guilty” even if they had ferrets..........

yes true bertrand - innocent was the wrong word.

hares are huge

They’re not really... a lurch will finish one off with ease.

It’s a random assortment of dogs. And actually just too many dogs to be up to no good with. Coursers tend to take just one or maaaaybe two. If they’re caught they run and abandon the dogs. They don’t give a fuck.

Hare coursers really are nasty pieces of work. I get so angry when I see them driving through our fields, and want to march out to tell them to fuck off, but never would. Police round here have been amazing recently at catching them with the help of all the farmers.

Lamping is only legal under specific circumstances actually. Not near buildings, not near roads. I can't remember the minimum distances but no one (round here anyway) observes them, so in practice a lot of lamping is illegal in fact. You also need to be the landowner or authorised by them. Obviously not what was going on here, seeing as it was daytime, but sounds like some kind of illegal hunting or fighting activity. I would report it too, OP, although my experience of this kind of report is that it's more useful if it's made promptly, so the police can approach and question, but still useful after the fact if it's part of a wider pattern of reports or crime, as a pp said.

Of course they’re hunting. Them and their ilk cause all sorts of damage to farmers. There was an article on Jeremy Vine about it a month or so ago.

Where are the hunt saboteurs to chase them eh? Too busy just chasing people on horses instead

dog fighting ?
yuck

I guess they were a bunch of inbred terrier men having a fun day our ripping animals to bits

Yeah, some horrible hunting of some type. Right breeds of dogs. We had people carry on lamping by our previous house, under cover of dark and with lamps of course, very creepy.

I live rurally and whilst some of the comments on the thread can sound prejudicial, your instincts tell you if something is "off". I could have started what would have looked like a ludicrous thread a month back saying I was sure something had been "rearranged" and felt off in my garden -Could you imagine the responses?

Well I was right. My immediate neighbours actually had the tiles removed from their garage roof, burglars lowered themselves in and wheeled away £20000 worth of vehicles during the night. They went in through my garden and used the wall to lever themselves onto the roof. What was off was the flattened leaves/vegetation. They had clearly done a trial run. I slept through it as did our dogs.

Sadly those who practice lamping don't care if it is legal or not.

Pheasant shooting?

Fighting dogs? Money is made on gambling. Horrible, linked to dog theft.