On Saturday morning a small group of us went to find the Dart Vale South Pool and Modbury Harriers who were meeting to cub hunt at Coleridge Cross north of Stokenham. Clearly surprised to see sabs, huntsman Ruben Kench, who has only just recently become huntsman for the DVSPMH, was heard discussing with support how they would lose us in the valley.
The landowner Mr Dark, while struggling with his horse who clearly did not want him on his back, tried to remove sabs from where hunting was taking place however we persisted and despite the steep hills we kept watch on them the whole morning.
After setting off around 8am the hunt concentrated their time in the valley between Harleston and Darnacombe Farm. Several foxes were spotted fleeing from the hunt and the landowner even admitted to sabs that hounds were on a fox! The hunt support were also overheard talking about the hounds being on a “Charlie” – a well known hunt code word for a fox. Blatant illegal fox hunting even for them.
We were surprised to find hunt thug George Bailey keeping the DVSPMH company as we thought he wasn’t welcome there anymore after his violent outburst a few seasons ago. He has a well known criminal record and most recently is on a suspended sentence for 18 months after beating his girlfriend and smashing a fish tank on her. As is usual for this thug he threatened sabs making a throat slicing motion as he sped by foot sabs on a quad bike. Apparently the new huntsman approves of such behaviour seeing as he has welcomed Bailey back.
At around 10am the hunt called it a day after spending a while trying to gather the hounds they had left strewn across the valley.
The police arrived at the end of the morning, apparently called by the hunt as sabs refused to give them their details. With supporters like Bailey is it any wonder we wouldn’t want them knowing where we live? Apparently the police had been told violent people were out frightening the hunt supporters, so they seemed rather surprised to only find a few tired people who were simply happy that the hunt weren’t trying to kill foxes anymore.
Evidently the police’s conversation with us didn’t go as the hunt support would have liked as they looked like they were going to explode in anger when the police left us and went back to chat with them.
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