The League Against Cruel Sports, the has been found using "illegal" methods to carry out culls of its own deer after a member of staff was filmed shooting them from the window of a Land Rover.

Graham Floyd was videoed repeatedly firing a rifle at red deer at the league's controversial Baronsdown sanctuary near Dulverton in Somerset, which was set up in 1959 to prevent deer being killed by hunts.


A survey by Government vets last year said the deer appeared healthy
The league has consistently claimed that it does not carry out "management culls" of its 250-strong herd because it does not believe that such methods are necessary, despite campaigners expressing worries that a proportion of the deer are suffering from malnutrition and diseases.

The carcasses of deer with tuberculosis have been found recently on land adjacent to the league's 225-acre sanctuary. Although a survey by government vets last year said that the deer appeared healthy, it concluded that a detailed health assessment was impossible without post mortem examinations which they were prevented from carrying out. Gordon Pearce, who was employed as a stalker for the league for 30 years, has become one of its most vocal critics because of his concern for the deers' welfare.


Gordon Pearce filmed the deer being culled at the sanctuary
In an attempt to expose what he sees as the organisation's "wickedness and hypocrisy", he filmed 11 apparently sick animals being killed by Mr Floyd since last October. The most recent was shot last Friday.

His footage shows Mr Floyd, who works at the sanctuary, herding the deer from behind the wheel of his four-wheel-drive vehicle before stopping to shoot them from his side window. He can then be seen getting out of the vehicle and attaching the carcasses to the back to drag them away to a burial pit.

According to the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, Mr Floyd's actions are against the law.

Simon Clarke, a spokesman for the association, said that his reaction on seeing the footage was one of "shock and amazement". He said: "The law was brought in to stop this kind of thing because driving after deer in a vehicle is liable to cause them immense stress. Stalking should be clean and quiet.

"It is hugely ironic that a group so against hunting would think it reasonable to go after deer in a vehicle. The man in the Land Rover is using it to split the herd up. It is basically like driving sheep. From their reactions it is clear that they are not wild deer, which the league has always maintained them to be.

"It is also apparent that there is no respect for hygiene and no inspection of the carcasses. Dragging them across the field is an appalling risk if the deer is infected with TB." He said that the association would call for a "full, independent analysis" of the deer population at Baronsdown and for "transparent" management procedures to be brought in.

Mr Pearce, who first voiced his concerns over the health of the deer 15 months ago, said: "Nothing has improved since then. It is because there are simply too many of them for the area and the supply of food available.

"Good deer management means keeping herds to a healthy size. This one needs to be reduced by 50 per cent. Otherwise the animals get sick and then have to be killed after a lot of suffering or are simply left to die in the undergrowth.

"The league are hypocrites. They claim they don't cull because there is no need and then they carry out this kind of shooting.

"Many of the deer are sick. Although I have filmed 11 being shot since October, I would calculate that the actual number that have died as a result of illness and malnutrition over the last three or four years is between 300 and 400.

"I have always been an opponent of hunting but the methods used by the Quantock Staghounds are far less cruel than what the league is doing."

Douglas Batchelor, the league's chief executive, said that although the deer were "wild" and were not fenced in, the sanctuary land could be categorised as enclosed. He said: "The land is technically enclosed."