No, it is not. The Hunting Act 2004 applies to deer. Stag and hind hunts rely on loopholes in the Act though: A mammal can be ‘flushed’ out by a maximum of two hounds and shot, or to relieve it of suffering. Stags are killed under the Hunting Act’s research and observation loophole – research that has yet to produce any public results more than a decade later. Latterly hunts have been claiming the hunted deer ‘has bovine TB’ – exploiting Schedule 1.2(a) of the Hunting Act, through which the hunt can use two hounds to flush out a mammal that might cause “serious damage” to livestock.     None of these ‘reasons’ are valid (and any deer suspected of having bTB shouldn’t be chased across the countryside anyway), but they are technically permissible in law provided hunts do not use more than two dogs – and stag hunts will typically use pairs of dogs in ‘relay’, meaning that a single deer will eventually be chased by many dogs but not by more than two dogs at any one time. (For more go to Protectors page > Deer and the Law)