Before the first school bell rang in a Hampshire village in 2024, blood was already running along the pavement. Roughly twenty carcasses — rabbits, hares, pheasants, a fox, and a muntjac deer with its head removed — had been piled outside the school gates overnight. The community had no immediate explanation, but investigative journalists Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor, whose BBC podcast series Buried had already won awards for exposing environmental crime, recognised the shape of something deliberate. Their new ten-part podcast, Buried: Dead Rabbit, follows that trail into the underground world of hare coursing — the practice in which dogs are set against hares to hunt and kill them.

The activity has been banned in the United Kingdom since 2005, yet it has not disappeared; according to the journalists' findings, it has instead become entangled with organised crime networks that use animal carcasses as a language of fear. Lambs were found strung up in public with their throats cut. Fifty dead animals were deposited outside a farm shop, their blood smeared across the windows. What initially appeared to be isolated acts of cruelty revealed itself as a coordinated system of intimidation aimed at silencing rural communities where illegal hunting operates.

Joining the investigation is Chris Packham, the wildlife presenter and campaigner, who is no stranger to this form of pressure. In 2021, his car was set on fire at his own home.