This was a rare Saturday meet for Eggesford Hunt. They stopped hunting Saturdays a few seasons ago in the hope it would stop them being sabbed. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. This was the third in a row of four of their meets which was sabbed!

The meet was at Lower Gorhuish, east of Northlew. The hunt had brought along a little catering trailer this time – fancy!

They set off south to Hookmoor Brook and then through South Moor Plantation, failing to pick up on anything other than the scent of a few deer in the valley. Huntsman Jason Marles brought hounds out to the road north of Cruft and put them back into the valley by Ashbury Plantations, drawing north past Horrathorn. A fox was spotted by sabs and hounds eventually got onto the line, taking it out of the valley towards Ten Acre Plantation. Jason hunted-on but a combination of our drone tracking the movement of the fox, one sab discreetly covering the fox’s line at various pinch points and other sabs stopping the hounds enabled the fox to get away safely.

Hounds were taken further north in direction of Ashbury. Aside from the fact they were trespassing on the neighbouring hunt’s ‘country’ at this point, hounds were also terrorising ewes with newborn lambs in the field, and we received messages from distressed locals reporting on this. Another fox was chased across the road, right past our team of sabs. This was in full view of all the hunt support. They knew we knew, and we knew they knew where the fox had gone. Predictably, Jason brought hounds to that exact spot and put them on the line of the fox. Hounds ran off in cry but the warming weather, the stench of the slurry that was being spread on the fields at the time, and determined intervention from sabs eventually caused the pack to lose the scent in the valley.

Eggesford Hunt met at Higher Biddacott on the edge of Chittlehampton. They seemed a little surprised to find a small team of sabs already waiting for them in the fields north of the meet. The hunt set off north towards Stowford, first drawing a blank in a large gorse patch and then carrying on east towards Breakneck Cross, with huntsman Jason Marles on foot a lot of the time.

They continued north through Bottomley Wood towards Stowford Wood, hounds failing to pick up on any scent. After drawing another blank in a scrubby area around Breakneck Cross, Jason took hounds via Sandy Lane back towards the area north of the meet and into Woodland Wood and Higher Ford Wood.

It wasn’t until they got to the Frogmore Copse valley north of Stowford that hounds picked up on the line of a fox, following the scent in full cry all the way east to Island Copse. Hounds marked a badger sett, indicating that a fox had gone to ground. The presence of sabs averted a digout, protecting the hunted fox as well as the resident badgers at the sett.

With not much to see all day, hunt supporters David Evans and Helen Dunn turned to their usual belligerent antics, both of them seemingly desperate to get their fingers caught up in the propellers of our drone at takeoff and landing.

They boxed up before 4pm at Woodland Farm, where the hound van and several horse trailers were parked for the day.

We headed over to Sheepwash to see the Stevenstone Hunt celebrate the birthday of a hunt member in a damp shed. Stephen James left the meet into an adjacent field and took the hounds straight to a nearby woodland at Upcott Barton and dismounted.

It wasn’t long before hounds had picked up on a line but were just as quickly rated off by nearby sabs, though terrierman Ben Vincent encouraged them back onto it and the hounds headed north into Upcott Wood.

Some time passed before we found huntsman and hounds heading towards Sheepwash. With James perched on the back of a quadbike and no field to be seen, the convoy headed into Sheepwash where we found the field at the pub with James’ horse in tow.

Seemingly frustrated by this, James’ continued without his horse, putting the hounds into some woodland near a sewage works, where they picked up on a line and shot off in full cry north, eventually ending up into Upcott Wood again.

Hounds tore through the large plantation, passed a nearby dog agility training session, and down to Higher Gortleigh where they lost the scent.

On Wednesday, 21 years after the Hunting Act came into effect, the 4 hunts of Dartmoor (Dartmoor, South Devon, Mid Devon, and Spooners) once again met at the East Dart Inn, for the annual Two Bridges Hunt Club meet. Mother Nature had other ideas, battering the area with constant rain, strong winds, and thick fog.

The hunt headed up onto the moors into Spooners country, led by Spooners’ new work experience huntsman Sam Kelly and half a pack of hounds, where they proceeded to hunt the area with little success for the next couple of hours. Kelly called it quits at around 2:30pm due to continued poor weather.

Delighted to have been joined by Plymouth & West Devon Hunt Sabs, Wiltshire Hunt Saboteurs, Hunt audits southwest and Cirencester Illegal Hunt Watch.

Silverton’s Valentine’s Day meet at Angie Prouse’s Creedy Barton wasn’t quite the day they were expecting. The lovely sunshine had brought out a decent-sized field and more quadbike followers than we’ve seen in a while, several of them equipped with terriers for digging-out. Not long after spotting sabs though, several of those disappeared.

Huntsman Chris Matterface evidently didn’t want to do too much in the presence of sabs and with the drone following his every move. He took hounds north from Shobrooke Mill towards Furze and then on towards Coombe Barton and Stockleigh Wood. Hounds picked up some scent and marked to ground at a badger sett we know well.

They then moved east towards the car park at Raddon Hill, via the track owned by South West Water – who apparently don’t give the hunt permission to use it for hunting. From Raddon Hill car park the support watched the hunt as they drew the various hedges and copses between Lynch Plantation and Kitlake.

At around 2pm the hunt began retracing their steps and headed back to the meet. A nice short day for us.