On Saturday we paid a visit to the Lamerton Hunt at one of the meets we know best: Swaddledown near Bratton Clovelly, owned by one of the hunt’s Masters, George Moyse.
A difficult day for our three foot sab teams, in often boggy conditions!
Straight from the off hounds were on the scent of a fox and running in full cry along the valley south of the meet. They briefly came streaming out of the valley and appeared to mark at a point along a thick hedge. From a distance, sabs kept a close eye on terrier man Steve who went to investigate but decided there was nothing there. As the hounds reached a junction in the valley they lost the scent and two deer were seen escaping across the fields.
While two of our teams repositioned to viewpoints at Redstone and Voulsdon Cross, hounds again erupted into cry and a ping-pong of foxes started… One of our vehicle navigators spotted hounds chasing a fox, with less than a car’s length between the tail of the fox and the lead hound. While sabs did their best to rate and call hounds off the fox, another fox broke through a hedge in front of a foot team close by and ran into the valley. Sabs covered the fox’s scent before being evicted from the land by Moyse’s crazy-eyed wife and several of the terrier quad bikes.
Meanwhile, the fox had made her way along the valley and out onto the road, where our Land Rover team were ready to cover the scent once more with citronella. Hounds and riders followed but it was a while before huntsman David Lewis came looking for his hounds, who by now had headed north in direction of Blagrove Farm. Soon after, another fox was spotted and David Lewis hunted hounds on into the valley north of Blagrove. Lewis spent much of the time on foot, which made it easier for sabs to follow.
As they normally do at this meet, the hunt began heading west in direction of Glandfield’s Copse, although the hounds by now were very spread out and many plainly ignored Lewis’s gathering calls. He himself had become distracted conversing with one of our foot teams. Police arrived, having been called by the hunt, and Lewis took the opportunity to go back into the valley south of Redstone to try once more to catch the fox they’d been hunting earlier.
Resident foxes, once flushed from their home turf, unfortunately don’t wait long before they return, so it’s no surprise that by the end of the day the hunt had drawn this particular patch three separate times. On the second round hounds went into frenzied cry once more. The area was difficult for sabs to access but the waterlogged ground also made it difficult for hounds to keep hold of the scent for long. Eventually Lewis doubled-back and took the pack north again to draw the wooded slopes towards Roadford Lake. A fox was spotted running into the woods where hounds were, but fortunately they had already bypassed this point.
Nevertheless, sabs covered the scent in case they should come back, which unsurprisingly they did about half an hour later after hunting through the Roadford Lake Nature Reserve at Southweek Wood, an area promoted for its wildlife and conservation value! We documented this and will be offering our footage to the South West Lakes Trust who own the nature reserve.
The assembled hunt gathered on the road and it looked like they might be headed for home, but instead they tried their luck a third time in the valley between Swaddledown and Redstone, this time drawing south towards South Breazle and then back into the original valley south of the meet. Sabs got into position just in time to watch hounds run uphill out of the valley on a line. Several hounds followed the scent into someone’s back garden in Bratton Clovelly, where they had to leave it, and the hunt subsequently packed up.
It’s a busy season for us already. Cold weather and lots of foxes have been the theme so far. On Tuesday some of our sabs were out on another hunt. Report to follow.