‘They car-bombed my house – there’s not much more they can do’: the astonishing podcast taking on illegal bloodsports

After 20 mutilated animal corpses were left outside a rural primary school, the creators of award-winning podcast Buried began investigating – with a little help from Chris Packham.

It plunged them into organised crime, the dark web and Line of Duty-esque rumours of police corruption In 2024, a village in Hampshire woke up to something truly disturbing.

A mound of dead animals had been dumped outside a school, and blood oozed out on to the streets before children’s classes started for the day. There were about 20 carcasses, including rabbits, hares, pheasants, a fox and a muntjac deer with its head severed.

The village was dumbfounded, and the biggest question was: why?

The husband-and-wife investigative journalist team of Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor – the pair behind the award-winning BBC podcast series, and now forthcoming documentary, Buried – found themselves wondering the same thing.

Their new 10-part podcast, Buried: Dead Rabbit, delves into this and finds them plunged into the shady world of illegal bloodsports.

Specifically, hare coursing – where dogs hunt hares to kill them, an activity that has been banned in the UK since 2005 – and its links to organised crime and the dang

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  ‘They car-bombed my house – there’s not much more they can do’: the astonishing podcast taking on illegal bloodsports