MORE than 70 different “cub hunts” have been reported this year, an animal welfare charity said today.

Cub hunting involves hunters surrounding a small copse and shouting and slapping saddles to scare fox cubs from escaping the woodland, which the huntsman enters with a pack of hounds. Any fox cubs detected by the hounds will be ripped to pieces.

The so-called “sport” has been banned for 14 years.

League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) head of campaigns Nick Weston said: “The only way they can do this is to give their young hounds the taste of fox blood – they do this by cub hunting. The brutal reality of this activity is clear in its name – they hunt and kill baby foxes.

“Hunts do this every year up and down the country, because if they didn’t, the hounds wouldn’t naturally chase and kill foxes.

“The existence of cub hunting proves that ‘trail hunting’ is a sham – these hounds aren’t trained to follow a trail, they are trained to kill.”

Mr Weston said it was time that the Hunting Act is strengthened to introduce prison sentences to deter people from organising and taking part in “cruel sports.”

The Meynell and South Staffordshire Hunt was witnessed cub hunting by LACS investigators who filmed a fox bolting from woodland and being chased by the hunt’s hounds.

Other groups recorded cub hunting were Belvoir Hunt, Surrey Union Hunt and the Duke of Beaufort Foxhounds.

Two representatives of the Hunt have been interviewed by Derbyshire Police in relation to allegations of illegal hunting.