Volunteer drone pilots catch catapult poachers in Hampshire

Volunteer drone pilots working with Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary have caught catapult-armed poachers firing ball bearings at pheasants from a moving vehicle, in the first publicised result for a scheme launched only last month. The footage, shot over farmland near Linkenholt in north Hampshire on Wednesday, 7 October, identified the driver, a 29-year-old man from Dibden Purlieu in the New Forest.

How does the drone scheme work?

Five trained civilian volunteers are on call to the force control room, which tasks them through the GoodSAM app to live incidents including hare coursing, poaching and non-dwelling burglaries. The force believes the project, launched in September, is the first of its kind in the country.

Funding comes from the police and crime commissioner Donna Jones, Test Valley Borough Council and the North Wessex Downs Farming in Protected Landscapes programme, FarmingUK reported.

GoodSAM is the platform ambulance services use to task community first responders, and it puts a qualified pilot over an incident while officers are still travelling. At the launch the force said drone support would cover live incidents rather than routine patrols, with hare coursing high on the list as the winter season approaches.

The outcome at Linkenholt

The drone footage shows at least three men, with ball bearings fired at pheasants from the moving vehicle. The driver was dealt with by community resolution, a victim awareness course and a Community Protection Notice warning; the outcome for the others has not been stated.

Inspector Stu Ross, who leads the scheme, said: “Rural criminals cause continued misery to farmers, landowners, gamekeepers and estate owners across the county, and indeed across the country.”

The result follows a wider push in the same corner of the county. On Friday, 16 October the force said five Community Protection warnings had been issued after two separate rural crime operations in north Hampshire, with catapults and poaching equipment seized.

What happens next

Catapult misuse is moving up the enforcement agenda: penalty notices for it rise to £500 from Monday, 26 October under the Crime and Policing Act 2026, even as the Home Office admits it cannot say how many catapult offences are recorded. The Hampshire scheme continues through the winter poaching season, and the force asks keepers and farmers to report incidents so volunteer pilots can be tasked while offenders are still on the ground. For keepers the practical point is speed: a drone tasked during an incident can follow a vehicle across ground a patrol car cannot, and footage of the kind shot at Linkenholt is what turned a fleeting sighting into an identification.