Poaching and Coursing

Poaching involves the taking of deer, fish or other game without permission, or using unlawful methods. Coursing is the hunting of animals with dogs, by sight.

There were 108 poaching and coursing offences recorded in 2022-23.
Figure 19: Police Scotland disaggregated offence data for poaching and coursing 2018-19 to 2022-23.

As shown in Figure 19, poaching and coursing offences had increased significantly in 2020-21 to 212 offences but dropped back down to 101 offences in 2021-22, and 108 offences in 2022-23 - similar to the level seen before the spike in 2020-21. The reason for this was not clear from the available data.

In 2022-23, approximately half of the offences were related to poaching of fish (55 offences, 51%) and the remainder related to poaching and coursing of hares and rabbits (32 offences, 30%), deer (18 offences, 17%) and birds (1 offences, 1%).

Further detail: on poaching and coursing offences by target species, police division and time of year is included in Tables 42 and 43 of the Tables supporting document.