Last Saturday we went to see what the Silverton were up to. We found them at their meet in the village of Stockleigh Pomeroy, but apparently the sight of sabs was so upsetting that they immediately packed up. As the terrier men took one of our vehicles on a tour of the countryside, our other vehicle followed as huntsman Chris Matterface took the hound van straight back to the kennels.
With that done we then moved on to search for the the South Tetcott who were meeting at Northlew. We found them hunting in 40+ mph gusts of wind and hail, with their red faced wind-burnt support out despite the weather hoping for a glimpse of carnage. Hounds were immediately found in cry in the valley south of Patchacott and a team of sabs ran in to rate hounds back.
Clearly very unhappy to see us, hunt master David Bowden rode his horse at sabs and whipped one of them around the head! This same individual thought himself very big pulling sabs’ hats off last time we were with this hunt. When denied their blood lust these cruel killers will take it out on the next nearest target.
The hunt then moved east to the valley south of Loveland farm where a fox was seen breaking ahead of the hounds. Sabs used voice and horn calls to pull the hounds away from the fox. Hounds then moved back west, rioting on deer, then everything headed south towards Stoney farm. It was a short day for us with the South Tettcot; as the weather got worse they finally decided to pack up around 3pm. However in this short time, sabs faced a lot of aggressive and dangerous driving, with hunt support nearly running into our sabs at high speeds down narrow country roads. It is only due to the sure-footedness of our sabs that no one was seriously injured.
As the hunt packed up, a hunt supporter came to confront sabs claiming that we had smashed his car’s back window. In the process of accusing us he attempted to open our land rover’s doors, threatened to drag sabs from our vehicle, and told us “you’ve fucking got yourselves a war now”. This same lunatic was the one who got inside our vehicle last time we were with the South Tetcott and refused to leave until the police were called. We are in the business of saving lives not causing aimless destruction and were far too busy helping foxes to safety to be worried about anyone’s car provided it wasn’t actively trying to run us over. We strongly suspect the damage to that car happened long before we arrived and the support were attempting to blame us to cover for their own activities… as when some of our sabs returned to their own car they found their back window smashed in with glass covering the seats. This is the second attack on sab vehicles for our group in the past month, with our jeep being attacked outside the Eggesford kennels last month. It will not deter us.
We also encountered some friendly locals, with one car pulling up besides one of our teams to congratulate us on being out in the terrible weather conditions.
After a busy day we still had time to head to the pub for a pint, which was much needed as our foot sabs were frozen and soaked through from the dreadful weather.