Chris Packham livestreams from a notorious West Country hunt

Television presenters and naturalists Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin filmed a West Country fox hunt this weekend to highlight the scale of illegal fox hunting still taking place despite the ban.

The pair joined North Dorset Hunt Saboteurs on Saturday as they monitored the activities of the Blackmore and Sparkford Vale Hunt and livestreamed for five hours on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

They called the filming Operation Smokescreen, a reference to the smokescreen term that has been used by chief superintendent Matt Longman, the national lead on fox hunting crime, and politicians and animal welfare campaigners to describe so-called trail hunting. The term was first used by the hunts themselves in an infamous leaked training webinar held by the blood sports’ governing body in which a contributor spoke about creating a smokescreen.

At one stage during the filming, a drone caught on camera around 15 hounds in woodland, with Chris saying it seemed as though the dogs had homed in on a fox underground and were "digging, trying to get to it".

Drone footage taken earlier in the week by the saboteurs appeared to show a rider with the hunt concealing the body of a dead fox with his hunting jacket.

Four men from the Blackmore & Sparkford Vale Hunt were convicted last year of illegal fox hunting after drone footage from the North Dorset Hunt Saboteurs showed a fox being torn apart by the hunt’s hounds.

Figures compiled by the League Against Cruel Sports showed that the Blackmore and Sparkford Vale Hunt was the worst hunt in the country, with 61 reports of suspected illegal hunting during the last fox hunting season and the cub hunting season that preceded it.

The figures were compiled from reports to the charity’s confidential Animal Crimewatch service and from hunt monitor and hunt saboteur online reports analysed by the League’s intelligence team, which is staffed by former police officers and civilian analysts.

Chris Packham urged anyone who wanted to see an end to fox hunting to sign the League’s open letter to the prime minister, which is urging the government to launch its consultation on hunting without delay.

During the livestream, Chris described the activities of the hunt. He said: “It’s like I’ve got a Tardis and gone back in time to an ancient medieval savagery.

“Where a bunch of entitled lunatics, possibly sociopaths or psychopaths, are riding around the countryside taking vicarious pleasure out of chasing wildlife and then watching it getting torn to pieces by dogs.”

He added: “Oh no, actually it’s the 21st century and I’m in Dorset on a Saturday morning watching this carnage."

Emily Lawrence, campaigns manager at the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “This brave livestream with Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin highlighted why we need to see an end to the brutal blood sport of fox hunting.

“The time for change is now. The government should launch its consultation to ban trail hunting, remove the loopholes in the law, end so-called ‘accidental’ hunting, and introduce jail sentences to act as a deterrent for those who would break new stronger fox hunting laws.”