Outrage as UK firm sells reindeer hunts ‘costing thousands’ in European country

A British hunting company is selling “exclusive” trips to Norway to hunt reindeer. Hendry, Ramsay & Waters offers “moose and trophy reindeer hunting in the northeastern part of Norway”, its website boasts.

Animal rights campaigners have blasted the organisation for offering its “exclusive” trips to find and kill reindeer, and demanded a “complete ban”.

Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting member and explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes told the Mirror: “If we needed proof of just how evil trophy hunters really are, then this is surely it. This is the most un-British thing I have ever heard of.

“These cowards are happy to ruin the spirit of Christmas for children everywhere. For a British company to be profiting from this disgrace is beyond appalling.

“We need a complete ban on this sick industry.”

Advertising the trips it has available for this Christmas, the company’s website scothunt.co.uk says: “Only a few licences are available for big males, so this hunt is very exclusive and the season very short.”

While it does not say how much the trips to hunt reindeers cost, they are understood to run up to thousands. The website also says they will suggest to trophy hunters the best rifle to use to kill the beautiful creatures, and even offers to help British trophy hunters with permits so they can take their own rifles through Norway’s airports.

The hunting company has “full exclusivity” in Norway’s Breheimen and Jotunheimen national parks, it boasts, adding the parks: “hold Europe’s last surviving population of wild Reindeer which have been hunted here since the Ice Age.”

Describing the area they are selling as a killing ground, the website says: “The landscape is breathtaking moorland framed with mountainous peaks and glaziers reaching 2,500 metres above sea level.”

According to the Mirror, spokespeople for Vernon Waters, who runs the company, dodged attempts to discuss the issue, while Express.co.uk has also contacted the hunting agency for comment.

Animal welfare campaigner Peter Egan, who starred in Downton Abbey, said: “Trophy hunters are the lowest of the low, but this really takes the biscuit. British trophy hunters are killing defenceless reindeer for kicks. I feel utterly sick to my stomach at the mere thought of it. Whatever happened to Christmas cheer and the season of goodwill?

“The best Christmas present the Government could give us is the ban on hunting trophies they’ve been promising for the last four years. Hopefully this scandal will prompt them to get on with it.”