Farmers fear criminal rabbit curves that “could kill someone”.

Hare Coursing has long roots in English history. Originally used for hunting and later sport, it sees dogs that hunt rabbits over rural fields. But once only one man and his dog, it has become increasingly the “sport of choice” for criminal gangs, with the frenzied vehicles that were rotated by men in Balaclaven through the landscape.

While the police say that the problem is taken more seriously than ever, some farmers only warn a matter of time before someone is killed.

“These are people who would be happy to distract them from the ground without a second glance,” said a farmer from the BBC.

He and his wife have described the shattering moment that a hare curve arrived directly in front of Salisbury Plain after dark.

“We were able to scream everywhere and turned our plan to go up the tip of the hill to see how many there and where we could give the police a better place,” he said.

The couple had not thought of confronting the visitors, but they were quickly surrounded by half a dozen vehicles.

“I got out and started screaming and roaring them, as it dares to do people to our business, to our home,” said the farmer.

“How can you dare to come and threaten us.”

In a video that was shot by one of the participants, the gang that the couple is mocked, and while some others are pushing to leave the farmer in peace, ball bearings from Schlingshots can be on the side of the farmer's vehicle before it is rammed.

The gang used the farmers' field for the illegal sport of the Hare Coursing, which was banned in Great Britain as part of the 2004 Hunting Act and the police forces are increasingly being carried out by organized and dangerous criminals across the country.

The peasant's wife stayed in the car by phone to the Wiltshire police, while the gang “rammed” her two or three times.

“They didn't care if you had stood there or not, they just handled you,” she said.

The BBC has agreed not to identify the Wiltshire couple, which still has to do with the trauma of what happened in November 2024.

A man was initially arrested and later released, but without faces to identify someone, and the number plates on the vehicles involved, the others escaped.

After the incident, the farmer suffered a crisis of mental health and said that he briefly considered whether he was taking his life – before he quickly looked for support from a helpline for mental health.

The couple said they wanted to tell their story so that people recognize what rural communities correspond.

“You feel very alone and isolated,” said the farmer's wife.

“If someone screams on the phone with 999 'Hare -Coursing', it's not an old boy with a dog, it is a serious crime and these people are dangerous.”

The couple is full of praise for the local rural police team, which they supported, but said that there are far too few officials who deal with the problem.

Another farmer, David Lemon, said Hare Coursing had become like “Guerilla Warfare” in his area on the border between Wiltshire Hampshire.

“We will probably be visited by Hare Course every other day,” said Lemon.

“The willingness to oblige violence against farmers and Wildhöfer has an enormous increase that tries to prevent what they do.”

As soon as the harvest has cleared the fields, the huge and remote chalk hills attract the Hare Courser and Wilderer. The season runs from the end of the harvest to spring before the harvests get too high.

“They used to ran away earlier, now they run towards them,” said the third generation farmer, who is worried about where things are going.

“I just think that a farmer will overreact or her [the gangs] I will think it's fun and play and bring it too far, “said Lemon.

“This will end in a chaos and I really think that someone will be, I dare killed.”

“This is the reality that the rural communities deal with and they are afraid,” said Claire Wright from the country Land and Business Association (CLA).

The CLA represents thousands of small rural companies, and Ms. Wright describes the BBC incidents of wild keepers that have been beaten up.

“One of our members had broken his nose with an iron bar when he was only accidentally in the way,” she said.

Another was spit in the face by a man who claimed to have HIV, she added.

The CLA said that the farmers can help protect their property by digging trenches to make it difficult for the vehicles to get to fields, and the municipalities ask the police and the neighbors to draw attention to everything that makes what suspects.

But police chiefs balance resources against other serious crime – and since the official crime statistics do not expressly record Hare Coursing, there is hardly any reliable data to determine the true extent of the problem.

“The few hardcore double their tactics, the crime they commit, is far more extreme than before,” said CH Insp Kevin Mangel-Kelly, head of the National Wildlife Crime Unit.

“These are criminals and in their pastime this is their voting sport”, with the majority of those who were caught being associated with a variety of serious and organized crime, he added.

The chief inspector said that betting rings and the sale of dogs can exchange their hands every time “ten and tens of thousands of pounds”.

His unity works with police forces across the country to improve the training and coordinate the answers, which he finally “raises the lid on the criminal lower abdomen from Hare Couring”.

Police powers like Wiltshire have rejected more resources in combating rural crime. In the first two months of this year, more than a dozen arrests were tackled about Hare Coursing.

“We now have a completely different approach to rural crimes than for years,” said Philip Wilkinson of Wiltshire (Police and Criminal Police Officer (PCC), who is now considered a “high priority”.

In practice, according to the PCC, this means that the small rural crime team “can now call all the strength as their cavalry”, from drones to the street police to the armed reaction.

He hired a joint surgery with Thames Valley, Hampshire and Gloucestershire police for alleged criminals at the beginning of this month, and added: “This is a national threat we want to deal with.”

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