Dead Animals on a School Doorstep Led Journalists Into a World of Illegal Bloodsports and Organised Crime
A new BBC podcast follows the trail from 20 mutilated carcasses outside a Hampshire primary school to hare-coursing gangs, the dark web, and allegations of police corruption.
Key points
- Around 20 animal carcasses, including a beheaded muntjac deer, were dumped outside a rural Hampshire primary school in 2024.
- Hare coursing, meaning the use of dogs to chase and kill hares, has been illegal in the UK since 2005.
- Investigative journalists Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor connected the dumping to organised criminal networks behind illegal bloodsports.
- The 10-part podcast series "Buried: Dead Rabbit" is available now on BBC Sounds.
- Researchers found links between hare-coursing gangs and the dark web, an encrypted part of the internet not accessible through ordinary browsers.
One morning in 2024, a Hampshire village woke up to a scene that stopped people cold. A pile of roughly 20 dead animals had been left outside the local primary school. Blood ran into the street before the school day began.
The carcasses included rabbits, hares, pheasants, a fox, and a muntjac deer with its head removed. Nobody could explain why.
That question pulled in Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor, a married pair of investigative journalists best known for "Buried," their award-winning BBC podcast. Their answer, it turned out, was buried deep.
The two journalists traced the dumping to the world of illegal hare coursing. Hare coursing is the practice of setting dogs on hares to chase and kill them. Parliament banned it across the UK in 2005, but the ban has not stopped it.
As The Guardian first reported, Ashby and Taylor found that hare coursing is not simply a rural nuisance. It connects to organised criminal networks, meaning coordinated groups that run illegal activities for profit, and to individuals who have allegedly used violence and intimidation to silence witnesses in villages across the country.
The investigation went further still. The journalists say they encountered references to the dark web and heard what they describe as Line of Duty-style rumours, meaning allegations that mirror the TV drama's theme of corruption inside law enforcement, about possible links to police wrongdoing.
Their findings are now a 10-part podcast called "Buried: Dead Rabbit," available now on BBC Sounds. A documentary is also in the works.
For people living in rural areas, this matters in a very immediate way. Hare-coursing gangs have been documented trespassing on farmland, threatening farmers, and, the podcast suggests, leaving scenes like the one outside that Hampshire school as a form of intimidation. If you live in a village and see groups of vehicles on fields at dawn, or witness animals being set on hares, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and local police both have dedicated reporting lines.
The case is a reminder that serious organised crime can take root in quiet countryside settings, far from the headlines.
