On Saturday, we had a special request to visit a hunt we’ve not seen in a long time, the Tetcott Hunt, not to be confused with their neighbours the South Tetcott, who are actually kennelled in Tetcott…
Tetcott Hunt have had some internal turmoil this year, with their huntsman resigning under a cloud back in May and the threatened loss of their kennels.
They met at Worden, north of Milton Damerel, and headed off towards Court Barton and the valley around Broombell Wood. They did not spend long in there, and barely cast hounds out, but they managed to absolutely terrify a small herd of young cows as they looped around west to hunt the long valley between Sanders Cross and Heddon Cross.
Hounds were immediately in cry in this valley and sabs were able to call them out into fields to the west. The hunt weren’t pleased and tried to engage us in the same old conversation about trail-hunting as the huntsman, Andrew Nicholls, gathered his hounds. They had very little to say about the leaked Hunting Office webinars, other than they have “better things to do with their time” than watch them. Apparently dressing up to hunt foxes all Saturday is a better use of time.
Perhaps a refresher course in trail hunt smokescreen-preparation wouldn’t go amiss though. Talkative Diana Stevens was happy to tell us that she uses old knickers as a trail-laying rag. Apparently it’s easy to loop a string through the legs… She refused to tell us when or where the trails were being laid so we could go and see for ourselves, but repeatedly insisted that there were several trail-layers on quadbikes laying trails ‘right now’. Unsurprisingly, we didn’t see a single one, and all the ‘trails’ we witnessed hounds follow either criss-crossed boggy ground, ran through dense bramble patches, came dangerously close to busy roads, or ended at badger setts… We strongly suspect Diana’s trail-layers were of the furry, four-legged kind. And while Diana was emphatic that they don’t hunt live foxes, some of the hunt supporters on the road were overheard complaining that with sabs around there wouldn’t be much real hunting to view. Unsurprisingly, Diana also had nothing to say about the presence of terriermen.
We were quite intrigued by her claim that the Tetcott Hunt source their trail-laying fluid (fox urine) from Amazon. Yes – believe it or not – you can buy fox urine on Amazon, sourced from American fox fur farms, but imports require a licence through the APHA. A few years ago, a Nottinghamshire Police Sergeant inquired about this with the APHA and was told that “this product cannot be imported without a licence and we do not have one for that currently. Anything that is across here would in this case be an illegal import.” Not only that, but 16oz (450ml) of fox urine costs £50-80 on Amazon, depending on the product. Assuming 10 trails are laid during the day and the rag is doused in the equivalent of a tablespoon of fox urine for each fresh trail, then each bottle would only last for 3 hunting days. Multiply that by 180 foxhunt packs, hunting 2.5 days a week (some hunt 2, some 3) for 9 months of the year… That means for each hunting season, about 5,400 of these fox urine bottles are needed, at a cost of £270,00-432,000 (depending on the product). Note, we think this is an extremely conservative estimate! Are they really telling us that they are spreading that much illegally imported fox urine across the countryside?
Back to the hunt… It wasn’t long before hounds were in cry again in a quarry near Youldon Farm, with sabs rating hounds out of a dense bramble patch. The hunt continued south and hounds were in cry once again south of Hill Copse. Sabs were on hand to rate and send them back to the huntsman with no foxes harmed. The hunt then went west, picking up a line near Hawkwell, which hounds hunted in full cry right up to the edge of Sutcombe. Here they terrified a bunch of local dog walkers who were out for a pleasant stroll on the main footpath from the village. We shared the hunt’s contact details with them so they could make a complaint. The hunt turned back east and were found again near Derworthy Cottages, joking about the ‘trials of a trail layer’, and packed up soon after.
This week we’re sharing a short body cam video of one of our foot sabs rating hounds in a valley at this meet. This is a sab’s eye view to show you the dense undergrowth where natural fox scent collects, the boggy terrain these hounds cross (where it’s clear no quadbike has laid a trail), and the actions sabs take to stop hounds from chasing foxes.