Back to the Silverton with our friends from Somerset Hunt Saboteur Group. The extra attention we’ve been giving this hunt is starting to pay off. The hunt met at Hayne House, just outside Silverton. On the way to the meet the huntsman enlisted several elderly hunt supporters in Silverton to block our vehicle by standing in the middle of the road. This week we were surprised to find several police vehicles in attendance even before the hunt set off. It transpired that they’d asked the hunt in advance where they would be meeting and that the huge volume of complaints they’d had from all of you since New Year’s Day haven’t fallen on completely deaf ears. Thank you!
Police told us they wouldn’t be taking sides but were there to ensure nothing illegal was going on. Their monitoring of the hunt’s activities didn’t extend to getting out of their vehicles and seeing what the hunt were up to in the fields but it’s a step in the right direction and the sergeant told us that “an officer is going to come along to the hunt to just monitor them from now onwards”. This would be a very welcome development, if true, but we’ll believe it when we see it. One of the terrier men was asked to clean his numberplate at the very end of the day and for a change the quads weren’t able to carry multiple passengers, but there are still glaring road traffic offences being committed by the terrier men in full view of the police. The fact that terrier men are even out on a supposed ‘trail hunt’ should also be a red flag for the police.
Knowing the police were coming, the hunt had prepared video evidence of their ‘trail-laying activities’ this morning, but we explained to police that any trails laid prior to the meet would have long since evaporated. And sure enough there was no sign of them laying any further trails during the day.
The biggest positive to come from the extra police attention is that the hunt barely did any active hunting today, never casting hounds out for long before bringing the pack back together. This made our job quite easy, as all we had to do was watch and follow. Sabs had the pleasure of witnessing a fox trotting across a field but thankfully the hunt never got onto him. After drawing a number of coverts in the vicinity of Silverton and Christ Cross (their ‘country’ really is rather limited!), they packed up around 2pm at Queensborough Farm.
