We joined up with our besties Three Counties Hunt Sabs along with Bristol Hunt Saboteurs and South Wales hunt sabs for a meet of the Ross Harriers and Leadon Vale Bassets. The day started off in its usual manner with Owain skulking about in beet fields. Now, what with his shocking incompetence, you would think he would steer clear of danger zones like beet fields but no. And lo and behold, a very lucky little fox ran straight past sabs closely followed ( a matter of feet) by several hounds. This happened right in front of the field and sabs with cameras and the hunt were forced to rate the hounds.
Owain then spent some time hiding up in a wood, with the hounds going in and out of cry. If you are on a trail Owain, Why are you spending so much in woods with no “chase” for the field? On leaving the wooded area, hounds moved through another beet field and on to a ploughed one, picking up and hunting a hare with no members of the hunt attempting to stop them at any point. Thanks to some good work by sabs on the road (sort of) the hare was given a good chance and with other sabs calling them off the line with horns, the hare was long gone by the time Owain got his lazy backside back to the pack.
As foot sabs tried to leave the land as requested, the hunt resorted to their usual tactics of violence and one female rider “Thea” rode her horse at speed through eh group, knocking one to the ground. This was a deliberate act as she can be seen on our video lining her horse up manoeuvring it into position.
The hunt briefly crossed over the road, getting straight onto another line but with sabs on both sides, they soon lost it. As they moved onto the road, one rider who was clearly not confident with his mount, lost his temper due to the horse playing up and after whipping it twice on the body, hit it around the head with the handle of his crop. When challenged on this, “Thea” (from earlier) became abusive and said it was none of our business. On being told to shut up, she went crazy and attempted to ride one sab down. This attack is also on video but for legal reasons we won’t be posting the video for now.
The hunt moved back into the area they had spent most of the day in, and whilst watching them from a gate, Terry, joint master turned up with another hunt supporter and proceeded to push and shove sabs about, insisting they were trespassing even though they were on a public road (not too bright is our Terry). He then smashed a journalists camera (on film too ). Not his best day ever!
With the hunt moving off, we headed back past the meet and on taking a sneaky peek behind the meet, came across the bassets. We tried to make polite conversation with the whip but funnily enough, he wasn’t too chatty when we asked him how he could be hunting a false trail when we had been in those fields most of the day and had seen no trail layer. They ended up giving up when it got so dark, they could barely see the hounds.
An eventful day with at least one hare and one fox given a fighting chance thanks to sabs being there.