Hunt saboteurs attached tracking devices to the vehicle of a huntsman and set up secret cameras to secure a conviction, a court has heard.

Footage obtained by a group called the Hunt Investigation Team (HIT) was instrumental in the successful prosecution of Paul Oliver, master of hounds with the now disbanded South Herefordshire Hunt.

Oliver, 40, was convicted of four counts of animal cruelty for allowing his hounds to kill four fox cubs and was handed a 16-week suspended jail sentence for causing their "painful, terrifying" deaths.

District Judge Joanna Dickens, sitting at Birmingham Magistrates' Court, also imposed a 12-week suspended sentence on Oliver's partner, Hannah Rose, 30, the hunt's kennel maid.

The pair, from Spalding, Lincolnshire, were ordered to pay £300 in costs and a £115 victim surcharge after being convicted of causing unnecessary suffering.

HIT, a relatively new group whose members include ex-services personnel, received training in covert investigative methods.