This area is a moonscape of dug out badger setts. A lone sab’ guarded a sett that is blocked at the Worcestershire opening meet. Sett blocking / earth stopping includes running a terrier through to make sure that any fox hiding is out and about to be hunted. Where badger setts are concerned this means that badgers are also in danger of being mauled or shot by a terrier man, so the killing of wildlife can start long before the meet, sometimes the evening before.

In 2019 at the Worcestershire Opening meet a badger was found shot in the head and her back end mauled. So early in the morning a sab’ arrived and was relieved to find the sett looking healthy and with badger breath coming out of an active entrance. In the next couple of hours a buggy did pass by a couple of times but no one stopped to interfere with the sett. Maybe the car was seen and they were deterred from demolishing the sett, maybe they were just feeding pheasants, we don’t know but more importantly they left them alone unlike on previous occasions.

The meet at 11am was observed and went on for a bit and the farmer came to tell the sab off for trespassing. He was informed as to why the sett was being monitored, of the blocking, that the police and Badger Trust had been kept informed and that this was contrary to the 1992 Badger Act. He said that he did not know that the sett had been blocked and knew nothing of the badger sow who had been killed in 2019 at another sett.

The meet went on for ages and the mounted field were told not to speak to any sabs. They rebelled by saying “good morning”. A long trek back to where the car had been repositioned meant losing the hunt for a while but locals reported road chaos and the police being called. West Mercia did not attend. A frightened deer was seen running down the road in the dusk from Goosehill. The sett where the poor badger killed by the hunt was found was looking active and not in any way interfered with apart from a few hound prints on it.