We went out this Saturday to upset huntswoman Jessica “Half-pack” Harrison’s day, as she and the Stevenstone reprobates tried and failed to kill foxes around Great Torrington.
The hunt met at their kennels on the western edge of Great Torrington town, where this decrepit bunch of lifeless antisocial corpses are rightfully hated by the locals. Huntswoman Half-pack Harrison took her handful of haggard horse riders west from the meet towards Frithelstock. Here she cast hounds into the valley at Culleighford, just north of the hamlet. Sab teams were positioned in various places along this valley to keep the hunt on the move and keep the hounds heads up, preventing them from scenting.
After an hour of sabs ruining her draws, Half-pack took the hounds way back towards Great Torrington and headed south, where she began hunting parallel to the popular public walking/cycling spot, the Tarka Trail. The Stevenstone hunt are banned from the Tarka Trail by Torridge council, and rightfully so. As sabs continued close behind, several hounds were heard going into full cry just off the eastern side of the trail, in the woods. We encountered a group of young people walking their dogs that were terrified by the harrowing noise they could hear. Sabs quickly made their way up into the woods to intervene.
After spending ages trying to gather hounds, huntswoman Half-pack continued south still parallel to the trail, hunting past Watergate and ending up at Barley Hayes. Billy no-mates Sean Watts, kennel huntsman and whipper-in, was left to trudge along the Tarka Trail, presumably to make sure the hounds didn’t harass members of the public trying to go about their day. Though we haven’t seen him on a horse much since the incident with the gate near Milton Damerel several weeks ago.
As usual the hounds spent most of the day doing their own thing and not listening to the horn or voice calls from huntswoman. At one point as the pack was split, a small number of hounds were found rioting on the line of two Roe deer that broke from cover. Sabs managed to rate the hounds and turn them away. Of course the huntswoman wasn’t anywhere near this incident, as another one of our foot teams were with her some distance away.
Huntswoman made one final attempt at drawing a copse at East Ford farm near Little Torrington, but sabs used voice calls to bring the hounds immediately back out of cover. It seems the Stevenstone hounds like us much more than Half-pack! The hunt glumly made their way up through the farm and slowly back to their kennels for a 3pm finish, not before trespassing on the Tarka Trail on the way back.
It was so nice to encounter so many anti hunt people whilst we were out today.
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