Yesterday’s sub-zero snowy weather didn’t deter Devon’s hunts from going out to kill wildlife. Neither did it deter us. South Tetcott hunt at least made the sensible decision to leave their horses at home, and instead only arrived at their meet on the edge of Northlew with hounds in the back of a trailer.
Keeping up with them on foot was pretty straightforward and not much ground was covered: from Bogtown Cross to Wigdon Mill, via a kale field into the valley south of there and then back up to Wadland Barton, where some hounds broke away and headed south towards Lower Melbury and Venn Barton, where they were eventually boxed up.
Our three foot teams kept eyes on hounds and huntsman throughout. Whenever the snow died down we also had the drone up above them, which resulted in huntsman Tim Ingram instructing his followers to try and shoot it down (they didn’t).
Tim spent much of the day on the phone to other hunts, boasting that he had sabs. We overheard him speaking quite openly about the fox which hounds had found in the kale field, before they were rated off the scent by sabs. Several other foxes were seen by sabs and their scent lines masked with citronella. Whenever hounds ran off on a line they were rated and sent back.
Towards the end of the day, sabs were left to gather hounds with horn and voice as Tim was nowhere near the hounds that had run off to the south. He tried to blame us for the fact they were not coming back to him, but he was blowing his horn well out of earshot of them, leaving his minion Sam to do the foot-slogging to try and round them up.
He eventually caught up with one of our foot teams who told him where the rest of his pack were and that the hounds clearly couldn’t hear him at that distance, but he couldn’t bring himself to take their advice. Eventually we got so sick of standing around in the cold, one of our horn blowers went and did Tim’s job for him, gathering up the stragglers so that we could all go home.
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