Injured hounds, incendiary devices, rape threats and indecent exposure at Eggesford Hunt opening meet
Together with three friends from Plymouth & West Devon Hunt Sabs, we attended Eggesford Hunt’s roadside opening meet at Chulmleigh Beacon on Saturday. Over the last few seasons, they’ve amassed a following of pubescent thugs who tear around the lanes 3-up on quadbikes with no numberplates and their faces covered. When they’re not driving at high speed, endangering themselves and everyone else on the road, they’re aggressively overtaking, blocking and vandalising our vehicles and making vile threats towards sabs. “I’d rape you, you fucking slag” was one such threat shouted at a female sab on Saturday. Other sabs had firecrackers thrown at them as they were walking down a road.
About halfway through the day, our runners came across a hound whose leg was badly caught on a barbed wire fence. The wire had wound itself so tightly around the ankle that the poor hound was unable to get free and was hanging off the fence in agony. One of our vehicles waved down field master Hugh Trerise and encouraged him to send someone to help with wire cutters. That help never arrived. After 15 minutes of desperately trying to free the poor hound with their bare hands, sabs managed to prize the wire far enough apart that she was able to wriggle free and run off. A different hound was seen earlier in the day with a massive gash down her side, and we received several reports that another was still roaming around Chulmleigh Beacon the next day.
Instead of focusing on the welfare of their hounds, hunt members were busy instructing the muppets to give us hassle. Having pulled over only to alert Hugh Trerise to the predicament of the hound caught in the fence, for which he initially thanked us, one of our vehicle teams was blocked in again by a handful of quadbikes for half an hour. This time James Skull, Jason Marles’ little servant, deliberately drove his quadbike into the back of our vehicle. Others tried to open the locked doors, while James stood in front of the vehicle, dropped his trousers and mooned our female driver. Just when you thought they couldn’t stoop any lower, another thug threw a lit firecracker under the boot of the vehicle.
All of this, and the other blocking incidents on Saturday, were caught on our cameras. We called police, who arrived about half an hour later and took details. The footage and names of all those involved are being shared with police. While we were speaking to them, a local landowner drove up and also wanted to have a word, complaining about the blatant illegal hunting, anti-social behaviour and unwanted hunt intrusion onto his land.
As all those in the vicinity of this hunt are by now well aware, this is what the Eggesford Hunt stands for. The behaviour we and others in the area were subjected to on Saturday is not only tolerated but actively encouraged by the hunt, and passers-by/members of the public are regularly caught up in it too. We hold the hunt accountable and no doubt the parents of these thugs will too when one of them inevitably causes a serious incident or gets a knock on the door from police.
As for the sabbing!…
With two vehicles and four foot teams we had the area well covered for most of the day in spite of the hunt’s low-blow attempts to deter us. The day began on Horridge Moor, followed by hounds being cast into the valleys between Beara, West Garland and Bycott. Although the pack briefly followed a scent to the west, the rest of the day was spent with huntsman Jason Marles taking the hounds steadily east, in direction of the Cheldon Buckhounds meet at Odam Moor. The two hunts came to within a few fields of each other at one point. Roe deer who had escaped the Cheldon suddenly found themselves being terrorised by the Eggesford as well. For a hunt whose preferred ruse these days is ‘rabbit hunting’ (yes, you heard that right!), they failed to hunt any rabbits, but several foxes were chased and plenty of deer and hares were put up by hounds.
The hunt spent a long time in Lower Vipershill Plantation, hunting south through Wixon Wood and Week Wood, with hounds picking up on scent and being rated at every opportunity by our foot teams, who were strategically positioned around this long wooded valley. A fox was able to escape. Hounds headed east towards Garland Plantation and Lower Thornham before chasing a fox north towards Langley and then back south towards Twitching Moor. The last part of the day was spent back in the Wixon Wood/West Week valley, with Jason hunting hounds on well past sunset. In fading light, hounds broke out of the woods and ran in full cry across the middle of a field at West Week. A foot team successfully turned hounds off the line, while one of our horn-blowing runners gathered the pack and forced Jason to call it a day.
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