North Cotswold Hunt – Childswickham – North Cotswold badger cull zone
We got an early morning phone call today telling us that the North Cotswold hunt and hounds were gathering in Childswickham, near to Broadway, within the North Cotswold cull zone (although in an area where so many setts have been blocked / tampered with / dug out over the years that it seems void of any badger activity). We jumped in the car and headed over to check it out.
As we arrived, hounds were being put into a covert near to Little Mocho Farm where they picked up repeatedly. On the road, our driver filmed a fox trying to escape from the covert and whipper-in riding towards the fox, making noise to scare him back in towards the hounds. On the other side of the wood, a fox was spotted trying to break from the tree line a few times, with hunt supporters making noises to scare him back in and pointing out his location to other supporters whose conversations increased in volume in response. Within the wood, landowner and other supporters stood around an artificial earth to prevent foxes being able to seek shelter within it. Just off-camera, one sab spotted a brace of foxes finally make a dash for it from the covert and along a hedgeline, hounds giving chase not long after. We believe they lost the scent in some nearby run-down farm buildings.
Heading south next, hounds picked up again in another covert, so we drove round and followed terriermen into the area to see what they were up to. Smoking liquorice-papered roll-ups apparently… as hounds moved back into the covert from neighbouring fields, we found ourselves in a perfect position to film and rate hounds as a fox ran from them.
Back to the original area and they tried to pick up on the scent of the earlier brace again, before having a little gathering between themselves and packing up. Calvin Crossman, falconer and failed-attempt-at-alibi for the hunt, tried to prevent sabs from walking to a footpath, wanting them to instead climb (and potentially damage) a fence and hedge belonging to the landowner. As sabs walked past him regardless, the words “piece of sh*t” and “fuck*ng c*nt” were quick out of his mouth, directed at the female sab who he assaulted back in December. When she turned to ask why the bad language was needed, he started to complain that she was harassing him… we think his views on the world are a little skewed!
Speaking of falconry, we’d like to quickly address the falconry exemption of the Hunting Act. In brief, it allows falconers to use dogs to flush foxes out from coverts in order for a bird of prey to hunt them in the open. The dogs are just to be used to flush the fox into the open, not to give chase themselves. So we would not be seeing packs of hounds running, in cry, on a line, for several fields or more. Additionally, we would not be seeing hunt staff and supporters making noise to scare them back into the covert as the idea is to get any running fox into the open…
We were told today that the hunt were using the falconry exemption and we were also told that they were following a trail. For argument’s sake we’ll say that they were intending to trail hunt. 1. Trails do not need to be scared back into a covert, so no noise is needed. 2. If a fox tried to run from hounds, you would let them run, not scare them back in, because you’d want hounds to be able to hunt the trail properly. 3. Especially during cubhunting, you would not make noise because, even if a trail were laid in a covert, you wouldn’t know if hounds had ‘accidentally’ picked up on a real fox and wouldn’t want to ‘accidentally’ cause it to be caught and killed.
Which makes us believe that the hunt are fully intending to hunt foxes in breach of the Hunting Act. Not a major surprise really….
A quick myth-buster to finish from the personal view of one sab out today… 1. I do have a job. 2. I fit work and sabbing around each other as much as possible. 3. It is a job that helps humans – why do hunt supporters always assume I don’t care about humans instead of just asking what I do? 4. When you say ‘why don’t you do something to help humans instead of being out here?’ whilst sitting on horseback in a field waiting for hounds to rip a fox apart, don’t you see any hypocrisy in your question at all? All in all not too bad a day (unless you’re unhappy-looking-huntsman Nigel Peel). We’ll be seeing you again soon we reckon Nigel and co.