Eggesford Hunt 13.11.2021 The recently-convicted wildlife criminals from the Eggesford Hunt were back at their ‘traditional’ Hatherleigh Carnival meet yesterday.
After standing around in the town centre for a while, shaking their money bags and encouraging kids to stroke the hounds, the hunt and their entourage headed off to Hatherleigh Moor to look for some wildlife to kill.
The next couple of hours were spent drawing every stream and hedgeline on the moor, disturbing pregnant-looking ewes and ground-nesting birds. Hounds put up multiple foxes. Two bolted from the same covert and ran towards our foot teams who sprayed to cover their scent and stopped hounds when they arrived.
After chasing off all the resident foxes and with many displeased dog walkers looking on, the hunt did something we’ve not witnessed them do before. Whipper-in Alex Warden and his girlfriend proceeded to lay a trail using the hide of what looked like a recently-killed fox. With the fox attached to the back of their quad they drove a few circles around some fields and then stopped and waited for the hounds to follow, which they promptly did. Clearly proud of their exemplary trail-laying, they made sure to film the whole thing.
At the end of the trail, the hide was thrown to the hounds for them to rag as a reward to mimic a kill, which of course is what these hounds would be expecting on any other occasion. This performance was rehearsed a few more times, but when hounds visited the same fields just 10 minutes later the smokescreen had evidently evaporated! Hounds failed to pick up on the scent that had previously been laid. As this hunt never bother with the pretence of trail-hunting except when it comes to trying to convince police and courts of their intentions, we’re grateful to finally have video evidence that trails laid by the hunt clearly don’t last more than a few minutes. This directly undermines their lies that hounds follow trails laid early in the morning or the night before.
From Hatherleigh Moor the hunt eventually went south in direction of Broomford Manor on the edge of Jacobstowe, an area that is much more shielded from public view. We redeployed our four foot teams and unsurprisingly found the hunt back on the line of live foxes, following their scent through thick hedges and dense woodland where no human could have laid a trail, never mind a whipper-in on a quadbike.
The hunt went as far south as Teachmore Farm and then back up towards Broomford via Stockbeare, where a couple of visiting terriermen from the Silverton Hunt were lurking, looking for something to dig out. Sabs covered the line of several foxes and were treated to the sight of one of the hunt followers’ quadbikes getting stuck in a ditch.
The hunt headed via Hatherleigh Moor back towards the meet, boxing up at Reed Farm at 3.30. Although there were some close calls, we are confident the foxes we saw yesterday got away, thanks in part to quick intervention from our vehicle teams and foot sabs.
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