The Hunting Act 2004 is a narrow criminal-offence regime grafted onto pre-existing animal-welfare law. The central offence in section 1 prohibits hunting a wild mammal with a dog, but the Act's practical reach is entirely shaped by Schedule 1, which sets out a closed list of exempt activities — stalking and flushing out (with no more than two dogs), use of dogs below ground to protect birds for shooting, falconry, rats, rabbits, recapture and rescue, and research and observation. The two-dog limit on stalking and flushing is the regime's principal numerical control on field activity.
The regime delegates almost all enforcement design to two non-statutory layers. The Crown Prosecution Service's Hunting Act 2004 guidance 1 sets out how 'hunting' is established evidentially and — critically — how the trail-hunting defence is to be approached. Because trail hunting is not itself defined in the Act, it operates as a factual claim that the activity falls outside section 1 (because no wild mammal is being pursued) rather than within Schedule 1. That makes it a defence to the offence, not an exemption from it, and shifts the evidential terrain: prosecutors must disprove the trail-hunting narrative beyond reasonable doubt rather than the defendant having to bring conduct within a tightly drafted carve-out.
The 2015 Conservative Government considered using the SI-amendment power referenced in the Commons Library briefing 2 to remove the two-dog cap and replace it with an 'appropriate to the terrain' test — bringing the regime closer to the Scottish position. That route was not taken. The current Labour Government's preferred direction, signalled by the 26 March 2026 consultation 3 and the 1 April 2025 ministerial statement [candpk=91709], is the opposite: rather than relaxing exemptions, to close the trail-hunting route altogether through primary amendment.
The Hunting Act 2004 (Amendment) Bill 4 sits alongside the consultation as a Private Member's vehicle. The Act layers onto, but does not replace, the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (which governs protected-species offences), the Animal Welfare Act 2006 (general welfare duties), and hare-coursing offences now strengthened by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 — so any reformed hunting offence has to be drafted with these adjoining regimes in mind.
What the regime cannot do, in its current form, is regulate trail hunting directly: there is no licensing or registration scheme, no statutory definition of trail hunting, and no power for the Secretary of State to set conditions on it. That gap is precisely what the 2026 consultation is asking how to fill.