A HUNTSMAN has denied causing serious injury to a female hunt saboteur who he allegedly knocked over with his horse.

A jury have been shown a two minute long video of the incident taken from the dashboard camera of the protesters’ Land Rover vehicle.

The footage shows saboteur Nicola Rawson with a male colleague with their backs to the gateway to a field on the Dorset-Somerset border.

They are blowing hunting horns loudly to distract the hounds and hunt and their Land Rover is in the entrance to the field.

Huntsman Peter Mark Doggrell is seen in his red hunting gear riding at pace into the field and flooring Miss Rawson.

Taunton Crown Court was played a 999 call made by her colleagues in which they describe her as ‘unconscious and not moving’ on the ground.

She allegedly suffered a number of broken ribs in the incident.

Doggrell, aged 46, denies causing grievous bodily harm to Miss Rawson during the incident in August 2014.

Mr Giles Nelson, prosecuting, said the case centres on a hunting event involving the Blackmoor and Sparkford Vale hunt, where Doggrell was in charge of the hounds.

He said there were five hunt saboteurs, known as sabs in the one vehicle who followed the hunt around for a couple of hours before the incident happened around 6pm.

Mr Nelson said during the first two hours the ‘usual stand off and mutual animosity took place between the sabs and the hunt and those associated with the hunt as well’.

He said various incidents were recorded by both sides against each other and there was an ‘escalation of tension’.

Mr Nelson said that Doggrell, who is known as Mark, was not involved in any violent contact or threatened any contact prior to the incident but he was made aware that sabs were in the area during the course of the trail.

The jury was shown the dash cam video which showed Doggrell’s horse charge into Miss Rawson near the village of Charlton Horethorne near Sherborne, Dorset.

Her colleagues immediately call 999 saying that one of the monitors had been ‘run down by a horse and is on the ground not moving and unconscious’.

Mr Nelson said:”The people in the field must have been in his sight. The noise they were making was obvious to anyone approaching that particular scene.”

”There was no particular need at that time for him to ride that horse as hard as he did.”

The Crown said that Doggrell was ‘irritated by earlier events’.

Mr Nelson said riding so hard and so close to people was ‘a reckless act’ which ‘unsurprisingly ensued in serious injury’.

He said:”The defendant did not stop. He had no interest in the safety of the person he struck and no interest in the safety as he approached the protestors. He rode his horse recklessly.

”The issue of the rights and wrongs of fox hunting is for some an emotive topic of course.

“This case is not about the rights and wrongs of either fox hunting or protesting, but how this riding led to the consequences that ensued.

”This was a reckless act. He foresaw the risk of injury by his actions and rode that way deliberately.”

The jury was also shown previous videos from that day’s hunting which showed both sides filming each other.

Miss Rawson was dressed in black clothes and wore a black balaclava mask and she and another female sab were filmed spraying a road to disrupt the hunt and its hounds.

In a prepared police statement Doggrell said he was the huntsman responsible for the hounds.

He said the first two hours passed without incident but he was told hunt sabs were in contact with them.

He was following a scent and saw the Land Rover but said the two people in the field “appeared before him’ and his horse shied.

He said the horse made a ‘glancing contact’ with Miss Rawson but he rode on to ‘collect the hounds’.

Doggrell said he ‘did not intend to make contact with anyone’ and was told 20 minutes later that the sab had been badly hurt.

He said he was ‘a careful rider’ and had been cantering at the time.

He said he had seen the vehicle from 50 yards away but did not see the people and ‘did not hear anything’.

Ms Rawson told the jury the five sabs from the Dorset group were there to ‘disrupt activities’.

She said the atmosphere between them was ‘tense’, saying:”That’s fair to say.”

Miss Rawson, in her 30s, was wearing combat trousers and a black top with a black hood.

She said they had been spraying citronella into the hedges to put the hounds off the scent.

She told the court she suffered seven broken ribs in the clash with the horse and couldn’t ‘remember much about after that’.

She said:”I did not see him coming. He came out of nowhere.”

She said she was hit by the horse 30 minutes or so after another confrontation with the hunt in a lane.

Her colleague Martin Porritt said they were there to ‘sabotage the hunt’.

And blowing the horn was designed to throw the hounds off the scent.

Defence counsel Peter Glenser asked Det Con Daniel Mason about the hunt.

The officer in charge of the inquiry said trail hunting was a legal activity.

And he agreed that ‘trespassing during a lawful activity was a criminal offence’.

The trial continues.