On Tuesday we were up early together with members of South Devon Animal Rights to find the Eggesford Hunt cub hunting at Pudson Farm just outside Okehampton.
Cub hunting, also known as cubbing, is an especially vile form of hunting where new hounds are trained for the coming fox hunting season. During cubbing, the hunt support surround small woodlands and valleys to turn back any foxes that try to leave while the hounds are sent in to kill every fox they find. They can kill many baby foxes, and sometimes entire families of foxes in one morning. With cubbing, the hunt isn’t after a chase, they simply want as many kills as possible.
As soon as sabs entered fields hunt support acted aggressively by surrounding sabs, pushing them and shouting in their faces. Hunt chairman Hugh Trerise kept physically shoving sabs while Duncan Tucker and other thugs circled on their quad bikes driving dangerously close to sabs.
The apparently deaf hunt support had their radios blaring so sabs overheard hunt followers saying to huntsman Jason Marles that “your ‘trail’ has just run lefthanded, up the hill towards those bunched sheep”. While several sabs headed up the hill after the hounds who were headed in that direction, another team saw a tiny fox flee for its life across their field, coming from the valley the hunt had just drawn. Once the cub had crossed the field, sabs covered its line with citronella to ensure no hound would pick up on the scent, all the while being harassed by the still present hunt support.
Soon after, another team of sabs were distressed to find hounds all piled in a bramble hedge howling as they got caught on thorns. Hounds had to jump a barbed wire fence to leave the hedge and kept getting stuck as Huntsman Jason Marles watched disinterestedly. Sabs attempted to help the hounds cross without injuring themselves while Jason claimed that his visibly bleeding hounds were fine. Apparently he’s so used to their yelps of pain that he doesn’t hear it anymore. Jason also left his hounds strewn all across the fields and valleys south of the meet throughout the morning. Sabs kept coming across distressed hounds howling as they were lost and had been left behind.
Several more foxes were seen during the morning but with a combination of citronella, voice, and horn calls we are fairly confident they escaped. Towards the end of the morning sabs successfully gathered the whole pack away from an area they were picking up scent in, preventing them from finding any foxes hiding there.
Soon after, at around 8am the hunt decided to pack up and headed back to Pudson Farm with sabs keeping an eye to ensure they all went home.