With hare coursing and other rural crimes increasingly hitting the headlines an action group has chosen this weekend’s Game Fair at Scone to launch a new and simple counter measure.
The PAW Scotland Poaching and Coursing Priority Group is to make available free of charge a bespoke notebook which will allow anyone seeing such crimes taking place to record at the time as much accurate and detailed information as possible to pass on to the police. The notebook is designed to fit in a glovebox or pocket.
The notebook encourages the witness to record as many details as possible about the event including information on the people perpetrating the actions, their equipment, vehicle, dogs and what the apparent quarry was and what happened to the quarry. The notebook also encourages the witness to record the reporting of the incident and the subsequent actions taken.
The reasoning behind the notebook is sound.
If coursers and poachers are apprehended and charged it may often be many months before a case comes to court. Fading witness memories are all too often exploited leading to a failed prosecution. By recording every detail and signing the pages on the day of the incident, evidence becomes far more credible and accurate.
Police Scotland has welcomed the initiative as an aid to more effectively tackle poaching and coursing and securing successful prosecutions.
John Bruce, of the British Deer Society, said: “Witnesses have been known to forget details or become confused about details even relatively soon after an event. It is our intention that, by having a notebook to hand and already formatted to make notes, witnesses can rapidly dump their observations into the book.”
The contributing organisations to the project are the British Deer Society, Scottish Land and Estates and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC). Approval and support has been granted by Police Scotland, the PAW Scotland Executive and the Scottish Government.
The free notebooks will be available either at the Scone Game Fair, from the sponsoring organisations or PAW Scotland. Alternatively they can be downloaded from www.PAW.Scotland.gov.uk.