Two Fernie Hunt employees have denied being involved in digging out a fox hiding in a burrow so it could be chased by hounds.

Huntsman Derek Hopkins and terrierman Keith Allen said they were acting within the law when a secret camera run by the League of Cruel Sports filmed them digging at the site, which was also a badger sett.

The pair have been charged with hunting a wild mammal contrary to the law and digging a badger sett or being reckless that their actions would damage it.

But they told Leicester magistrates that the footage showed them trying to dig out a terrier which had been sent in after the fox, and which had become stuck.

Philip Mott, QC, defending, said flushing out a fox with a terrier for it to be shot was allowed under the Hunting Act 2004.

The court heard the incident happened while the Fernie Hunt was chasing a trail – where false trails are created using scent laid down by the hunts.

It is said to have taken place on Wednesday, January 27, last year after the hunt met at Thorpe Langton, near Market Harborough.

Allen and Hopkins said the hounds picked up the scent of a fox in a burrow and that joint master of the hunt Chris Parker had ordered them to snare it then shoot it.

Allen (51) of Nether Green, Great Bowden, told the court it was his job to lay the trail and kill any foxes which were accidentally run to ground or snared.

He said: "I put in the terrier to flush out the fox. I had put purse nets over the entrance to the holes. "I was going to snare the fox in one of the nets and shoot it with my shotgun."

Diana Cottrell, prosecuting, asked him whether the fox had been dug out for the hounds to chase. Allen said: "Definitely not, no."

He said the fox escaped as the hole was being dug to scare it into the snares.

Allen told the court the hounds had been following the line of the second trail when they came upon the live fox underground at Mill Farm near the hamlet of Stonton Wyville.

Miss Cottrell asked Allen if he knew he was digging an active badger sett.

Allen, who has 24 years experience as a terrierman, said: "I could see no evidence of an active badger sett. I don't think it was one."

Hopkins (45) of Welham Road, Great Bowden, who has been the Fernie Hunstman for a decade, told the court the riders and hounds had followed two trails that day before the hounds found the fox.

"We were trail hunting," he said.

He denied they were hunting live foxes. He said the joint master of hounds decided the cornered fox should be shot and he called in the terrierman to "dispatch" the animal.

Hopkins said he could not see any signs of an active badger sett in the area where the fox had gone to ground.

Hopkins said he had kept the hounds away from the hole as the fox was dug out.

He said that when the fox ran off, followed by some of the hounds, he and other hunt staff actively stopped the hounds from chasing the fox by cracking whips.

The trial continues.