A 1969 ruling by the House of Lords said that ‘guilty intent’ in criminal acts is important in establishing guilt in all ordinary cases. Successful Hunting Act prosecutions against such an ‘intent’ defence would be based on proving that the actions of the defendant equated to encouraging his dogs to chase a wild mammal, for example by the use of the hunting horn, or that the defendants deliberately allowed the dogs to be out of control when they realised that they were on the scent of a wild mammal. The Crown Prosecution Service highlight a case where defendants were able to claim that “although their dogs may indeed have hunted a wild mammal, there has not been proof that they intended their dogs to do so, or that they could have done anything to stop them since they were far away from the dogs when the chase took place”. (The answer to the question of whether the ‘defendants’ should have allowed the dogs to be so far ahead of them that they were effectively ‘out of control’ was not provided.)