On Saturday 27th November in the wake of Storm Arwen we visited the Spooners meet at New Venn Farm on the edge of Lamerton.
Although we were delayed getting to the meet, with two vehicles and five foot teams we easily outnumbered the hunt on this occasion.
They spent a couple of hours in the valley between the meet and Lower Chaddlehanger with just a couple of support cars watching from the road.
Around midday we discovered a dig-out in progress at a badger sett. The terriermen stopped what they were doing as soon as we showed up but they hung around in the vicinity of the sett for long enough for us to realise they must still be looking for one of their terriers who was still in the badger sett. After a long wait, the terrier resurfaced from the sett and the terriermen scarpered. The rest of the hunt had long since packed up.
Dig-outs normally mean certain death for the fox but we are confident we intervened in the nick of time and this fox will have got away. As interfering with a badger sett by blocking sett entrances or entering a dog into the sett is a wildlife crime, police are investigating the incident. So as not to jeopardise the case, we will only be sharing the full footage from the dig-out when that investigation is complete.
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