This Tuesday a small team of us with the help of a friend from South Devon Animal Rights decided to visit Dartmoor to see what the hunts were up to.
We chose to keep eyes on the Spooners and West Dartmoor hunt first. Their meet was at Long Plantation near Princetown, the host being their own field master Martin Allison. A relatively small affair with a lack of support and riders.
Long term follower Mary Alford, who’s son Daniel is incidentally a director of the badger cull in this area, was busy scowling at us: http://innocentbadger.com/cull-zones/badger-cull-company-directors-revealed/
She is also the brains behind making Dartmoor ponies into sausages and burgers:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/856134/Dartmoor-ponies-Devon-farmers-West-Country-Mary-Alford-Charlotte-Faulkner
Huntsman Guy Morlock was asked if he would be hunting within the law today, to which he replied ‘always’. Funny how he needs terriermen on equipped quads to achieve this?! And the fact they were seen by a member of public digging out a fox near Dartmoor prison only two weeks ago shows his complete disregard for it.
Guy was obviously not impressed at the thought of being sabbed today, so decided to ride off into oblivion across the moors, meaning his support were left with nothing to see for most of the day!
Due to lack of sabs and the distance and speed at which the hunt were travelling deep into the moor we sadly decided our time would be better spent elsewhere.
Luckily our friends at the Dartmoor hunt had met just a couple of miles down the road at Dunnabridge Farm so we headed there and caught up with them fairly quickly.
Seeing as the two hunts were so close and the support were already quite scattered they seemed to intermingle and kept bumping into each other. So you would see Spooners on one side of the road and Dartmoor on the other. Not much loyalty it seems, they were just watching whichever hunt they came across first! Sad to think that hounds would have potentially been chasing foxes from one hunt straight into another.
Huntsman Harry Gosling took the hounds North through Bellever Forest leaving his terriermen Jamie Hawkins and Nathan Willcocks on the outskirts no doubt awaiting a call to do his dirty work or whatever role they actually serve on a ‘trail hunt’? From the forest he headed back onto the moors and we caught up with him towards Lower Cherrybrook and Smith Hill Farm. Sabs got there as the hounds were marking a fox to ground and Gosling promptly started gathering his hounds away from what they quickly realised was an active badger sett. This sett had been recently blocked, with just one hole left open and hound prints visible. This was blatant illegal hunting and whoever blocked the sett was committing a crime. As sabs stayed to protect the sett and take photographic evidence to log with the police the hunt scarpered and headed back to the meet to pack up.
Worried the terriermen would come back later to attempt a dig out we stayed. Unsuprisingly another known terrierman, Mark Warnett, soon decided to come down and start threatening sabs to get off the land, saying he’d called the landowner and insinuating we had blocked the sett ourselves and would be committing a crime by unblocking it. He soon gave up when he realised we would not be deterred. In conversation he was asked about his role with the hunt to which he replied he ‘road watches’ to make sure no hounds stray, and the reason he has terriers is to legally flush rabbits out to the pack…their excuses just get better and better.
With the light fading we were greeted by another visit from desperate Gosling who started walking towards the sett asking what we were doing, repeatedly asking us to go home and saying he didn’t trust us not to ‘set him up’?! You set yourself up on this one Harry! Apparently he was also looking for a lost hound but he made no attempt to find the imaginary animal and only seemed concerned with what we were up to.
It’s simple – keep illegally hunting and we’ll keep sabbing you. As it got completely dark we felt it was safe to leave. We hope the fox did the same and of course we must spare a thought for the poor badgers too who’d had their home destroyed.
We are always in need of more sabs on weekdays please message us if you’d like to help. The more of us out there the more effective we can be.
Long run the fox!
Gallery
