Hare coursing events in Tyrone and Antrim have not gone ahead this week after the Department of the Environment in the North withheld licences required for trapping hares.
The Countryside Alliance has accused ministers in the Northern Ireland Office of imposing their personal views and of being anti-democratic.
The League Against Cruel Sports welcomed a temporary Special Protection Order and called for a ban on hare coursing in response to what it insisted was a decline in hare numbers.
Members of coursing clubs in Ballymena and Dungannon have been travelling to events in Co Donegal and Co Cavan following the effective banning of hare coursing in the North.
Fionna Smyth, spokeswoman for the League Against Cruel Sports, welcomed the temporary measures and said her organisation would push for a permanent ban on hare coursing in Britain to be extended to the North. "We are very concerned that one of Ireland's best-loved native species appears to be in decline," she said. Hare coursing "and all the cruelty associated with it" should not be allowed to continue.
However, Ronan Gorman of the Irish Countryside Alliance denied hare numbers were in decline and said a series of measures had been put in place to prevent dogs from killing hares at coursing events. He said ministers were "imposing their own views on people here".
More than 500 people were present during a protest against bloodsports at the annual St Stephen's Day hunt meeting in Tramore, Co Waterford, yesterday, when the Waterford Foxhounds club left the town and headed towards the townland of Coolnapogue, some 3km away.