While some of our sabs met with Cirencester Illegal Hunt Watch yesterday to visit the Cotswold near Turkdean, another sab met with Welsh Borders Hunt Sabs and a representative from Outpaced to go to the Cotswold Vale Farmers’ Hunt.

Two of sabs had less time to spare this week, so decided to pop along to the Croome and West Warwickshire Hunt both on Tuesday and yesterday for a few hours of motorbike monitoring.

Tuesday saw the meet held in Wixford where the hunt had breakfast at the Fish Inn. Much of the hunting took place the other side of the main road at the Lenches (more on that another time) and during the last draw of the day a fox was spotted dodging out of the corner of the covert and making his escape before the hunt packed up to ponderings about whether a motorbike helmet was the new face mask…

Yesterday was due to be the last meet of the season in Peopleton and we arrived on the afternoon to find sheep and lambs running around in roadside fields as horses and hounds ran near or through them. Whilst drawing a covert by a main road two supporters were spotted pointing and raising their hands. Hounds left that side of the covert accompanied by huntsman but struggled to pick up the line well… We followed to observe and as we did so we’re in turn followed by a rider supposedly laying the trail. Behind the hounds? Nothing major going on whilst we were there, apart from some dodgy driving by a supporter and another getting annoyed at not knowing who one of our sabs is.

We haven’t spent a lot of time with the Croome these last two seasons, but various locals continue to keep their eyes on them openly and covertly. We’ll be sure to spend more time with them in future seasons too.

Wherever you are, keep the info coming and keep doing good work out there too. More people are starting to realise that you don’t need to be part of a sab group to stop wildlife persecution, people checking setts before and after work, walking their dogs or going rambling near hunt meets and keeping an ear out for local info… People are stopping dig-outs, unblocking setts and reporting incidents such as the Croome hounds killing a deer a couple of seasons back.