With our Land Rover back in action this weekend we ventured south on some roads made very familiar to us during the badger cull. We met up with the new group, Somerset Hunt Sabs, to go where no sabs have gone before (for the best part of one or maybe two decades at least), turning up to a joint meet of the West Somerset Vale Hunt and the West Somerset Foxhounds.
Considering our small number of sabs in the field, lack of knowledge of this hunt, unforgiving terain and more support and mounted field than any sab would ever wish to see, we did pretty well!
For the first hour or two we did our best to keep with the hunt in our two vehicles. Occasionally we would hear hounds briefly go into cry but on the whole this hunt were keeping quiet.
We finally pinned the hunt down on the Quantock hills above the village of Crowcombe and caught up with them just as the huntsman was drawing a gorse covert. He moved off pretty quickly upon our arrival and tried a bit more sneaky drawing. As we pushed him on again, hounds picked up on the scent of a fox. We tried our best to rate the hounds from our position and got some heads up, giving Charlie a bit of time to make an escape. Thankfully sabs in the vehicles were in the perfect position to cover the scent of the fox and due to their presence the huntsman thought it best to pull his hounds off.
After this he spent a good 20 minutes gathering his hounds before they moved off back to the meet.
All in all a good day – two hunts previously unknown to us and at least one fox saved. Big up to Somerset, we’ll be alongside ya in the field again soon.