We kept close tabs on them to start with and when hounds managed to hunt a fox from Toad Corner we were ideally placed to rate the hounds off, allowing him to escape into some gorse.

Ollie Dale then took hounds the gorse, flushing the fox out just in front of hounds… but he escaped into a large badger sett. Since the police have warned the hunts about blocking setts, many remain unblocked and this fox managed to escape as a result!

The feeble explaination of “cold marking” (where hounds mark a hole with a fox in residence as opposed to one escaping from them into a hole) cut no ice with us.

Shortly afterwards another fox ran by and we sprayed across the wood to mask his scent. They went on for another hour or so with the terriermen getting a bit snotty towards the end.

As this is in the North Cotswold cull zone, sett checking was commenced afterwards, intermingled with brunch.

A short stop for tea and updating logs and it was then a matter of peanut harvesting. Another team from 3C was active in the West Gloucestershire zone.

These are very long days and people were busy into the small hours protecting badgers, with other groups and individuals working extremely hard and putting themselves in very uncomfortable situations too. Hats off to Cirencester Illegal Huntwatch who are doing so much in South Gloucestershire and all the independent local autonomous groups.