Today the hunt met at The Brainge in Putley. The terrier-bike was out very early and seemed a little nervous when they realised some of us had also got into the area before the meet. Well done to one of our sabs for picking them up!

For the most part of the day we kept an eye on them pretty well, when they hunted a fox through Lady’s Wood and the bit where a hunt supporter pointed out a fox to another who then pointed out the location to the huntsman, Mark. Hounds were cast into the wood, splitting once they were rated and picking up on another fox in a nearby woodland. We believe they lost both of these.

We did have a small issue when one sab came out on to a road near to Putley Riding School, seeing hounds running down the fields towards her and stopping to keep an eye on them. One girl mentioned the hunt weren’t supposed to be on their land due to the mud and the sab told her the location of the hounds and said to just let her know if she needed to move out of the way as they were moving their horses before the hunt came past. It was all very amicable (we don’t treat people differently in situations like this regardless of their views on hunting) until the girl’s mother turned up to see if the hounds were on her land and asked the sab if she was into hunting. Then the pushing started (sab was on a public road) and the shouting and the allegations (like putting up pictures of people’s horses so they could be stolen) and the threats from the daughter (“I’m going to shove that camera up your arse!”) all in front of the youngsters they were in charge of. Very nice. Very narrow-minded. As the hunt and hounds weren’t doing anything interesting at the time, the footage wouldn’t have even gone online…

We stayed with the hunt as they picked up, stray hounds all over the place and sabs splitting up to keep an eye from different directions. We told whipper-in Tim that he wasn’t doing his job properly to which he replied with “neither are you – we’re hunting aren’t we?!”

We kept an eye on them when they marked to ground and when they hunted through yet another person’s garden, losing them from time to time, but certainly keeping them on their toes!