*** Heythrop terrierman caught on camera telling others to stand on badger sett ***
Today’s sabbing is dedicated to our friend and fellow sab Mel who was recently seriously injured by the Woodland Pytchley Hunt. Due to personal commitments and new sabs wanting to come out, we stuck to a local hunt this weekend.
We heard, last minute, that the Heythrop were going to be near Donnington this morning and tracked them down at Banks Fee Farm. They left the meet around 6.15am and drew blank for the first 30 – 40 minutes. Having moved on, hounds picked up on a patchy scent on and off further within the woods but lost the scent and were moved on again by hunt staff.
Some of our sabs were within the woods, hiding up in order to stay unseen but also to avoid putting up or heading any foxes (basically scaring foxes towards hounds) and checked on a badger sett nearby. Other people were out and taking the heat off us by keeping our usual stalkers company. As one team found a sett, unblocked but covered in boot prints, we heard from another sab that terrierman Gary Morgan had been caught on film telling his mates where another sett was and to go to stand on it*.
* We’ve done well in this area in deterring the blocking of badger setts, but many hunts and followers will stand on a sett instead in order to scare foxes away from them and stop them going to ground.
The hunt did a runner back across the main road towards Condicote soon after and teams caught up with them at Banks Fee Rough and a maize field which hounds were going through. Stalker Lizzie-the-liar**, who had already missed one sab by about 5ft earlier in the day, missed another in the covert when looking for them, one sab distracting her while the other carried on with the hunt. The hunt packed up not long after, around 10am.
** having walked up to our sab, then called in ‘the boys’ Lizzie told us that our sab had walked up to her and tried to intimidate her (2 cameras were running at the time, so that accusation won’t go anywhere). She also intimated that she could have told ‘the boys’ about it if she’d wanted to, but she didn’t, as though she’d done us a favour by not lying to them to get him beaten up. Cheers for that Liz, clearly we owe you one…
Check out our cubhunting article for more information about how and why it happens.
