The Cotley Harriers met in Chard town centre for their Boxing Day meet. They were met by protesters in the town centre and sabs in the field. The Cotley were well overdue a visit from us, as they killed both times we last sabbed them, once in plain sight (see our video) and once by hunting a fox to ground in an artificial earth before bolting and shooting it. They hunt in Devon and Somerset and yesterday they straddled the border.
As soon as they left the town centre, hounds were running in full cry on the line of a fox in the valley between Bounds Lane and Green Lane. Riders were kept away from the action and were busy jumping hedges when hounds crossed the road into the coverts around Cotley and Lodge Farm. Here one of our teams witnessed a fox hunted to ground and the terrier men were called in. Our foot teams did their best to converge on the location but they were set upon by various drunken hunt supporters and terrier boys, even while on the footpath. Getting to the earth required leaving the footpath down a steep slope through the woods. The thugs were ordering us back up to the top of the woods but at the same time grabbing hold of sabs and pushing them down the slope. Five out of six sabs in the woods were females, being attacked by a group of drunken men. One of the hunt’s ‘trail-layers’ (something we only ever see on Boxing Day!) was the worst of the lot, violently barging into people, grabbing hold of their legs and pulling them down the slope. This was the only thing he did for the hunt all day, as the pack never went anywhere near the ‘trail’ he was pretending to lay. They stole items of clothing and attempted to yank cameras and radios out of sabs’ hands and one of them told a female sab “I’ll kill you”. Unfortunately we cannot say what happened to the fox, as we were outnumbered and couldn’t get close.
Please share and help us identify the two men in our pictures:
While all of this was going on, the pack moved on to the north. Sabs caught up with them in the fields east of Bartletts, where a different ‘trail runner’ had been seen previously laying her ‘trail’. Strange how the hounds didn’t make a sound when the huntsman made them follow the exact path of the trail…! By now, our vehicle and several of our foot teams had acquired a tail of hunt supporters, who blocked them at every turn. A foot team on the road was being driven at by vehicles mounting the grass verge they were on and someone on a quad bike carrying three people drove past and reached out to grab a female sab walking on the verge. The harriers began speaking again around Weston Farmhouse but the road was blocked by hunt support cars so sabs were only able to watch from a distance as they drew the valley towards Lancin Farm. The driver of one of the vehicles, who had earlier tried to get into our landy, told one of our sabs he would split her head open “from ear to ear”. This is the true face of hunting. The Cotley, who on their own cameras like to appear polite and gentile, are nothing but a bunch of violent, law-breaking thugs.
Although it had been a difficult day, not helped by heavy rain and wind, our sabs did see two foxes making a break to safety, one very close to the pack and the other a few fields away. One fox ran out right in front of us but fortunately wasn’t seen by the hunt members who were just coming round the corner of a field. Sabs stopped to guard the run where the fox had crossed into the next field in case they doubled back. Eventually we followed the hunt back south towards the kennels, where they packed up at around 15.30.
Although Avon & Somerset Police had sent several police vans to the hunt meet in the town centre, they didn’t seem interested in the overloaded and illegally driven quad bikes, the drink driving, the overt violence and intimidation and of course the illegal hunting.
Thank you to Somerset Hunt Saboteur Group, who kindly lent us their Land Rover, and thanks also to monitors and friends who were our extra eyes and ears yesterday. Solidarity with all the groups up and down the country that had to witness the deaths of numerous foxes, hounds and horses yesterday, all because this violent ‘tradition’ is allowed to carry on. Although the hunts are in the public eye on Boxing Day, fox hunting goes on nine months of the year, several times a week, all over the country. In Devon alone there are over twenty active fox hunts. Don’t be under any illusion: direct action is the only thing that stops them.
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