King Charles has been accused of hypocrisy after 12 foxes were “shot and strung up like trophies” on Crown Estate land, we can reveal.

The grim discovery in ­countryside owned by the monarch, near Penicuik, ­Midlothian, sparked a police probe and comes as Charles claims to be at one with the natural world in a documentary out this week.

Campaigners have written to the King urging him to intervene after images obtained by the Sunday Mail showed the slaughtered animals, with some of the bloody carcasses draped over a fence near a publicly accessible path.