This Saturday Eggesford had a meet to celebrate the birthday of bloodsport enthusiast Dave Cole, seen most Saturdays for the last 60 years munching sausage rolls in a layby, dreaming of the days when he could fit on a quad bike.
The hunt started at Pudson Farm, home of Lloyd Heard, and spent the day solely on land belonging to the Heard family. Like most farming families, the Heards use their land for killing wildlife and collecting subsidies, so let’s hope the inheritance tax takes a chunk of it sooner rather than later.
Right at the start, hounds got on a fox, not so coincidentally right next to the farm house. With huntsman Jason Marles encouraging them, the hounds were only a few feet from their tail when the fox managed to get through a small gap in the fence. We have seen the same situation play out many times resulting in a fox’s death. Thankfully in this case the hounds were held up by the fence and the fox managed to get to safety. Sabs rated the hounds and bought the fox a few additional seconds.
This all happened in full view of the hunt riders who guarded one side of the copse to cut off the fox’s escape while Jason sent his hounds in from the other side. Don’t believe the lies of the hunt support who know well what is happening and actively participate in hunting and killing. Nevertheless it’s surprising that they can’t get their lies straight! While he was trying to evict sabs from the field after they had witnessed the fox being chased, Lloyd Heard insisted “we’re laying trails” and then immediately corrected himself with “we’re hunting rabbits”. A few minutes later, another rider protested “that was a laid trail”. When she was reminded that the Eggesford’s new preferred ruse is rabbit-hunting, she claimed she doesn’t normally hunt with them and doesn’t know. It’s pretty simple: No trails were laid, and the orange bushy-tailed animal that broke from cover, was coursed by hounds and went to ground in a badger sett next to the farm was not a rabbit either.
The hunt carried on via the valley south of Broadmoor Lane, then towards Place and Fowley, before taking the track at Graddon Cross towards Meldon. They then went towards South Down and the hounds spent hours in and out of cry in the dense gorse on the western side of Meldon reservoir. A fox was seen again only feet from hounds but intervention by sabs allowed her to run to safety.
Jason is not a moorland huntsman and managed to lose half his pack. He spent most of the afternoon trying and failing to gather them. Sending his field back to Meldon and leaving the western side to some lackeys, he rode around to the east with Heard. Too nervous to lose any more hounds he didn’t attempt to hunt and sabs kept an eye on him as he did a big loop and packed up at Pudson with about 10 hounds still unaccounted for.
The hounds are treated as disposable and are just as much victims of the hunt as the wildlife they are forced to chase. We hope they made their way back to Meldon, but lost hounds are a sadly common sight on Dartmoor. Throughout the day sabs also came across numerous sheep skeletons scattered across the Heards’ land. Are they deliberately trying to attract foxes to hunt by leaving dead animals lying around, or is this just another instance of farmers not caring for their ‘beloved livestock’ and leaving them out to rot?
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