The scene that greeted the shop workers a few days earlier could hardly have been more different, after the battered remains of about 50 hares and two birds of prey were dumped in the early hours outside the shop. Blood was smeared on the windows and the bodies of a kestrel and barn owl jammed in the door handles.

“It’s incredible that someone would do that, shocking,” said landscape painter Caroline Hall, a shop regular. “It’s such a privilege to see hares and birds of prey in the countryside around here. It was so cruel.”

Hampshire police are exploring the theory that the animals were killed and dumped by hare coursers, who set dogs on the mammals and livestream the chase for gamblers to bet on.

But why leave the carcasses outside the shop in Broughton, a village of about 1,000 inhabitants renowned locally for the dovecote in the churchyard said to have been gifted by Richard III? 9 “That’s the puzzle,” said Mike Hensman, treasurer of the shop. “We think it may just be location.” The village is roughly equidistant between the cities of Winchester, Salisbury and Southampton. It is surrounded by open farmland and chalky downland, good hare territory.

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“I don’t think it was a planned, targeted attack,” said Hensman. “Just one of those things that happens in the countryside. We’re a resilient lot. People were shocked but not scared and we’ve rallied round.”

It is not the first time there has been such an incident. Last month, about 25 dead hares, rabbits, pheasants and a decapitated deer were left outside a village primary school in Awbridge, 7 miles from Broughton. Villagers say there were two similar incidents at two other schools that have not made headlines. In January a deer was discovered strung up in a tree in the nearby town of Totton.

One Broughton resident, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said there was undoubtedly a pattern and that the Awbridge incident happened after a farmer confronted hare coursers using his land.

They said that a few days before the bodies were left at the Broughton shop, an attempted burglary in the village was thwarted. “What happens is, the gangs try to intimidate people. The animals are a message: ‘We can do what we want and you can’t catch us.’ There can be a ‘them and us’ situation too. This is a wealthy village. That can make us unpopular.”