Saturday started with the Stevenstone at their meet at Yeory. Their sole car supporter gave up after five minutes and went home, as did their only quadbike follower who showed up and didn’t even bother to unload his quad. Jessica Half-Pack Harrison was left with just whipper-in Sean Watts and one rider as her entourage, taking her half pack of hounds for a ride along the lanes around Merton so the hounds could empty their bowels all over the pavements and grass verges surrounding the village. If any normal dog owner did this, they’d be fined. But for some reason it’s okay for the hunt not to pick up their hounds’ parasite-laden excrement.
After just an hour Stevenstone Hunt were back at the meet and hounds were boxed up and driven back to the kennels. Let’s face it, this hunt didn’t exactly start the season in the strongest position. Well, they didn’t start at all until December because they didn’t have a huntsman and were at each others’ throats. But the fact that they can’t hunt at all now when sabs show up doesn’t bode well for their future!
We set off to find the Torrington Farmers who were having their end of season meet in the Huntshaw area. Various hunt vehicles were found at Woodhouse Farm and scattered around the lanes at Millbrook. One of our foot teams tracked horse and hound prints from there to the north, catching up with the hunt just west of Gammaton Moor Cross. Various Stevenstone riders and car supporters were at this meet and told us they’d opted for Torrington instead of Stevenstone because this hunt was “more fun”. When the Torrington Farmers Hunt is described as “fun” that really is an admission of the dire state of affairs at the Stevenstone Hunt!
Hounds were first spotted in cry crossing the road to the north but then seemed to lose the scent. The rest of the afternoon was spent between Gammaton and Haddacott Moor, with huntsman Steve Craddock repeatedly losing and gathering hounds, before everyone headed gradually back towards the meet. Craddock has had many years now to work on his horn blowing but perhaps it’s just not for him.
Car support looked bored to death throughout and the riders turned their frustrations on sabs, deliberately riding into them at every opportunity. Some masked-up teenage quadbike followers were desperate to impress their girlfriends, visibly wetting their nappies every time they managed to block our vehicle on the road for five minutes before they were told off by locals for driving dangerously and holding up traffic. One of them punched a sab in the face as he drove past the sab at high speed. Small word of advice: if you’re trying to hide your identity, Scott Curtis, it’s advisable not to put your driving licence on the outside of your phone case for all the world to see.
This was the last meet for disgraced kennel huntsman and hound-beater Jack Rowles, but he was nowhere to be seen.
A number of other south-west groups were sabbing the Mendip Farmers meet at the home of the haunted candlestick (aka Jacob Rees Mogg). They were accompanied by Chris Packham, whose description of the state of hunting in 2024 seems pretty apt: “The plot was lost with Hankinson, what remains is a dreary shambles, a tiny bunch of foul mouthed and violent people moping about in their shrinking anachronistic bubble, maudlin in the mud. Oh dear, what a shame.”
We still have a few weeks of the season left so if you’d like to support our sabbing of this dreary shambles, you can do so here. And please keep your tipoffs coming in! Thanks.
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