North Cotswold Hunt – Video

It was a wet, cold day in January and we had added the North Cotswold to our list of hunts to sab just a week earlier. We easily found them that morning as they have quite a small country. Sabs first saw hounds in full cry running across a field from a covert and stopped them on a nearby road. Huntsman Nigel Peel took them on to Bourton Downs and a lone sab saw a fox run from the hill down the field with the huntsman putting the hounds on the line, holloas and whistles heard. This sab then managed to stop the hounds on the line again, unfortunately unable to film at the time. Three other sabs, inland, watched the next scene unfold from a different perspective, one of the new sabs (who joined us after the cull ended a month earlier in Gloucestershire) managing to get in with the hounds and rate them off the scent of the quarry.

For a couple of hours we lost the hunt, hearing them or seeing signs of them inland here and there, but being unable to locate and get to them. However, we found them again near to Guitinghill Plantation, having heard them speaking and circling around on the road to intercept. Hounds streamed down a tree-line in full cry and a fox crossed the road in front of sabs, looking wet and tired. We only managed to hold the hounds up for a few seconds as they were so close behind him and they easily picked up on his scent again, especially as the usual whipper-in (on foot at this time) jumped into the field and encouraged them on (despite sabs stating the obvious to him that the hounds were on a fox – a good thing to do evidentially and in an attempt to deter hunts from continuing to give chase).

Two sabs ran into the field as the fox entered a wide bunch of bushes and brambles separating two fields. With the majority of the pack having run through and continuing to chase what we later believed to be a different fox whose scent was picked up in the brambles and only a few hounds still within the brambles, the sabs made the decision to run though the area as well instead of having to go back to the road to enter the next field. Normally you would not want to enter an area like a covert due to the risk of ‘heading’ (scaring) a fox back towards the hounds, but decisions about how high the risk is in a given situation have to be made quickly. As one sab made her way through, a fox ran past her and disappeared back into more brambles. She was able to cover his scent with citronella and the rest of the hounds left shortly after having given up on the chase… Trying to catch up with the rest of the pack, they were almost hit by a car on the road.

Julian Barnfield and Richard Sumner were present on the day (Julian seen grinning at the sabs who had run into the field). These two were the fall-out guys for the Heythrop Hunt when they were convicted of illegal hunting and they left the hunt, apparently to go to the North Cotswold.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-20758022

Holloas and whistles were heard by the B4077 and sabs split to cover the hunt from inland and from the road. More holloas were heard and the pack remained in full cry almost constantly for around an hour, sabs giving chase as best they could. The Heythrop Hunt had been in the area only half an hour earlier, so any foxes who had escaped one hunt now had another to worry about. Luckily it was not long before it got dark and the hunt packed up. We are unable to say if they killed during the day as we were not with all of the hounds all of the time (or, indeed, the terriermen), but felt we’d done what we could where and when we could. Hounds were rated off scents or held up by the use of citronella, sabs holloaing and rating.

All in all, not too bad a day!

3C