A long day for our sabs today following various tip-offs over the last few days. It seems that the Ledbury Hunt were hoping to miss us this week when they hunted South Herefordshire Hunt country yesterday and returned to traditional Ledbury country today (for a large meet to attract new people this afternoon).
We started with an early visit to Stow-on-the-Wold as the North Cotswold Hunt were to be meeting at Nosehill Farm for 7.30am and the Heythrop, about an hour later, at Swell Buildings Farm (just a minute’s drive away from Nosehill and both meets in the North Cots cull zone) where they would be having a hunt breakfast. A 3C sab attended with an independent cull sab and gathered around an hour of footage of the North Cotswold Hunt blatantly ‘holding-up’ (making noise to keep foxes within a covert). A vixen showed her cunning when she dodged in and out of the brambles, avoiding hounds and, despite speaking on and off for a long time while drawing the covert back and forth we don’t believe there were any kills within it.
When asked if the hunt were following an artificial scent or flushing to the bird of prey that was present, hunt members just laughed… obviously making noise would be pointless as an artificial scent would not need to be scared back into the hounds and to flush to a bird you would want the fox to run out of the covert. So that just leaves illegal hunting…
Police arrived and asked what the hunt were up to – we told them that we would forward on any footage of the hunt’s behaviour. We will also be sending them links to information about cubhunting – all information written by hunts themselves regarding the activity and why it’s done, descriptions of ‘holding-up’ and so on (though we’ve never found any descriptions written by Beckford, Jem Hills, David Brock, Clifford Pellow or anyone else known to the hunting community that refers to the playing of sh*t youtube videos or monophonic ringtones to head foxes…)
With the arrival of our usual ‘stalkers’ from the Heythrop Hunt just after they set off from their meet, we decided to pay them a little visit. Both hunts had headed inland and we soon had other cull sabs in the area to check on known badger setts and artificial earths. With stalkers still following us, we took them away from the hunts around 10.30am and let them watch us eat breakfast whilst others kept an eye on the hunt and checked on areas unhindered. We soon came across hunt supporters in town who were overheard talking about the Heythrop ‘going downhill’ and how they only hunted around about 5 fields all morning which was off-putting for some of their supporters.
Sett-checking within the North Cots zone as usual in the early afternoon was quickly followed by a visit to the Ledbury Hunt where the 3C sab from this morning met up with 2 other 3C-ers and a representative from Outpaced and headed to the meet at Pigeon House, Eldersfield, West Gloucestershire cull zone. A sab’s personal vehicle was damaged by a hunt supporter who then spent an embarrassingly long time bigging herself up to her mates about it afterwards (later she would also swerve in front of 2 sabs on a motorbike).
The terrier quad bike, not road legal or safe with 2 passengers plus rider and minus number plate, attempted to give chase to motorbike sabs, getting within a metre of the back wheel of the bike on a couple of occasions and with one passenger then trying to kick sabs off the bike. Riders later unlawfully ‘removed’ sabs from a piece of land when they were checking that terriermen were not about to do a dig-out.
All in all some great teamwork between cull sabs, 3C sabs, locals and Outpaced. We’ll be following up on the various offences committed soon so watch this space!
