Despite being delayed by a day and ignoring calls by anti-hunting campaigners, Hadleigh's traditional Boxing Day hunt went ahead the morning without incident.

The Essex and Suffolk Hunt do not meet on Sundays so instead gathered at Holbecks Park this morning to continue a 200 year tradition in Hadleigh and followed their hounds that were pursuing a trail, rather than chasing foxes.

The hunter in charge of the dogs wore a horn to encourage and help them, and had assistants to help keep control.

It was estimated the dogs found a trail at least twice during the day, and the hunt covered about 20 miles over Holbecks Park and the Hadleigh countryside.

"People still love the tradition with a boxing day hunt," senior champion of the hunt James Buckle said: "Hunting is not just about galloping around the countryside and we often have a lot of pedestrian days, which is why we have such a fantastic mix of followers who are all on the hunt for their own different reasons.

"I love watching our dogs work, and nothing is more exciting to me than when they find a clue, the lead dog will start with a whimper, and when they all participate in the music, it's just wonderful.

"Even without it, and on a day with a little scent, just being out in the country on my horse is a real privilege that I will never take for granted.

"I always love the day, seeing the support the hunt gets encourages that despite the changes we've had to make, people love the tradition."

Anti-hunting campaigners have criticised the Government for granting licences for a number of Boxing Day trail hunting events despite fears they are used as a "smokescreen" for illegal fox hunting.

Labour and the League Against Cruel Sports have called for a ban on trail hunting, which mimics traditional fox hunting and activists estimate that over 240 hunting days took place on land owned by the Ministry of Defence in 2021.

Chris Luffingham, the director of external affairs at the League Against Cruel Sports, added: "It's time all major landowners permanently banned trail hunting on their land and that the Government strengthens the Hunting Act to ensure its loopholes can no longer be exploited."

The sport was dealt blow in October when Director of the Masters of Foxhounds Association Mark Hankinson was found guilty of encouraging trail hunting to be used as "a sham and a fiction" for killing animals.

Doing so is illegal in England and Wales under the Hunting Act 2004

National Trust members voted to stop the sport on its land over concerns of it covering illegal hunting, and Natural Resources Wales followed suit.

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