ILLEGAL HUNTING, VIOLENCE AND VANDALISM AT EGGESFORD ‘BOXING DAY’ MEET
The Eggesford met at their traditional meet at Oaklands on the edge of Okehampton, bolstered by riders and support from a few neighbouring packs which have come down with kennel cough.
Sabs kept eyes on the hunt all day as they rushed through their usual Boxing Day draws in the pouring rain, starting with the valley south of Broadmoor Lane and then crossing the road in direction of Place Plantations. Here a fox was hunted to ground in a hole under a hedge. With terriermen including convicted badger sett digger and Puddington parish councillor Seward Folland eagerly circling the area looking for an opportunity to dig out, we stayed behind and made sure the fox was able to get away safely.
Watch the video:
North of Graddon Cross sabs were confronted by a landowner who insisted they were trail-hunting and in the same breath invited sabs to come back in March “and see what a fox will do to a lamb”. We have similar conversations with landowners at almost every meet to the point where you’d think trail-hunting means continuing to hunt live foxes. If this year’s hunting webinar conviction is anything to go by, it clearly does!
The hunt continued to head east and this is when Lloyd Heard decided it was going to be his job for the rest of the day to pretend to own all the land in the area and ride his horse aggressively at sabs. Not only is this extremely dangerous behaviour which could easily result in serious injury, but using his horse as a weapon is also unbelievably cruel to the horse who was being forced against her will to ride into people. This same behaviour continued in fields around Moorview and Pudson farm, in full view of passing traffic. Elsewhere Lloyd and Mandi Heard spent a lot of time straddling both sides of the busy main roads with their horses, much to the frustration of other road users who were stuck in a long line of traffic behind them. A member of the public flagged us down a while later and told us they had come along to watch the hunt but were disgusted by the hunt’s aggression and road-blocking antics and that this wasn’t what they’d come out to see. The Eggesford once again do themselves no favours! At Pudson the hunt marked another fox to ground, witnessed by one of our teams from the road. This one also got away safely thanks to the persistence of sabs.
The next draw was in the long valley between South Narratons, Eastington and Ellmead farms. Sabs spotted a fox running from hounds and ran in to cover the fox’s scent. Knowing which way the fox had gone and that Jason would typically interpret sabs’ rating as a sign that hounds were on the fox’s line, sabs tricked Jason into putting hounds on the fox’s heel line, i.e. hunting the line in the wrong direction. Jason gleefully encouraged hounds to hunt past our sabs, unbeknownst to him buying the fox a crucial bit of time to get away!
After spending a while longer in this area, Jason crossed the road back past Pudson Farm towards Hatherleigh Road and into the final valley of the day, south of Forestry-owned Halsbear Wood. We repositioned sabs and witnessed the hounds split, with two halves of the pack heading in opposite directions. Sabs could see from a distance that some hounds had run back south and ended up all over the busy Hatherleigh Road. Hunt support and riders sat further up the road like lemons while cars were forced to screech to a halt to avoid hounds that were spilling out from the hedge. In any other situation having a dozen dogs out of control on a busy main road would be considered a dangerous traffic hazard and the owner would be reprimanded for it. But as far as the Eggesford are concerned, ‘anything goes’ in the countryside. These are people for whom attacking and injuring others (humans and wildlife) is a hobby and a sign of strength, and the more laws they get away with breaking as they’re doing it, the stronger they feel.
Hunts remain banned from Forestry England land. However, terriermen, riders, hounds and Jason trespassed in Halsbear Wood towards the end of the day, frightening several local dog walkers who were out for a quiet stroll with their families. Jason plus a few bedraggled riders then rode back to the meet and packed up as it was getting dark.
Although this was a tough day in tough conditions, we are pleased to have helped at least three foxes to safety, two of whom would have been dug out and killed if sabs hadn’t been there. And in typical Eggesford fashion the hunt vented their frustration through vandalism. After some of our supporters went the next day to check the locations where hounds had marked to ground, they came back to their car to find its front and back windows smashed. If there’s one thing the Eggesford should have learnt over the years, it’s that this kind of behaviour only garners support for sabs and gives us another reason to keep coming back.
This is the first of several hit reports we need to catch you up on. As well as sabbing the Eggesford’s Boxing Day meet on Monday, we sabbed them twice last week. There was also a sab presence at two other Devon hunts on Monday. While another DCHS contingent sabbed the Spooners & West Dartmoor meet, our friends at North Devon Wildlife and Hunt Monitors spent the day with the Torrington Farmers, and at least three other hunts (Tiverton, Silverton and Cotley) were faced with protesters at their meets.
Gallery
