Last Saturday the dying Stevenstone Hunt met at Cloister Hall in Frithelstock. New huntsman Stephen James, who had been drafted in last minute to take over from Half-Pack Harrison, attempted to hunt foxes in the area north of the meet, owned by Chris and Serena Ham.
The new huntsman took the hounds out on foot, accompanied by 4 field riders and several terriermen on quadbikes. Sabs had the area covered and intervened at every opportunity. Tempers were flaring and the supporters’ faces began to turn a very angry shade of red. Peter Bromell rode his horse into sabs and tried to steal their cameras. Other supporters were threatening violence. Hounds also spent some time chasing a terrified sheep around a field and the hunt were quite content to let it happen.
Landowner Serena was insistent that the land was her “garden” (“how would we like it if she came trespassing in our gardens” etc.). Perhaps she thinks rebranding her agricultural fields as her garden might help her dodge the new inheritance tax requirements?
The claims about what the hunt were doing in Serena’s “garden” with a pack of hounds, quadbikes equipped with terrier boxes for digging-out etc., were pretty changeable too. One minute they were “just exercising” (“do we really look like we’re dressed for hunting?!”) and the next minute – when Stephen cast hounds into a particularly dense bit of scrub and they briefly began speaking – they had suddenly switched to “trail-hunting” (“trails have been laid and it’s all been filmed”).
If trails were laid, those laying them must have done a pretty sloppy job, because there wasn’t a peep from hounds for the first hour and a half. We’d certainly love to see the video of the hunt laying trails in the gorse and dense bramble bushes they ended up drawing. We asked who the designated trail-layer was who could have penetrated such dense covert. As if on cue, a trail-layer of the orange, bushy-tailed variety bolted from a particularly dense bramble patch the hounds were drawing. Hounds began chasing the fox and were actively hunted-on by huntsman’s horn, all on our cameras.
Sabs were well-positioned to run into the gap between fox and hounds, allowing the fox to carry on along the bottom of the field towards the road. However, the fox then darted into the hedge, ran along a run in the middle of the hedge and tried to exit on the other side, probably aiming for the nice open hole in the bank. Based on where Peter Bromell was sat on his horse on that side of the hedge, it seems the fox saw him and turned in the hedge, now running back along the hedge straight towards the hounds. Sabs spotted the fox running along inside the hedge and rated hounds on the field side who were trying to squeeze into the hedge to get to the fox. At one point there was an awful sound in the hedge which led us to fear a kill, but sabs investigated the exact spot and found no evidence of a kill, only a fork in the run which we suspect the fox took to escape from hounds who were closing in.
The hunt were now all out of smoke to screen themselves with, so what did they turn to next?… Devon & Cornwall’s finest, of course. Because, according to Serena, people were invading her “garden” and “damaging her hedge”. Although Devon’s hunts have wasted enough precious public resources, admittedly calling the police to their own criminal activity is a pretty bizarre call to make. That, along with the fact that assaults and fox chases only result in more persistent sab attention, is a lesson they’re going to have to learn for themselves. Huntsman Stephen at least had the sense to pack up at this point – at 1.30pm – and return to the kennels.
Once we knew the Stevenstone Hunt had returned to the kennels we caught up to the two other Steves, Craddock and Burton (yes, it gets a little confusing!), at the Torrington Farmers. They had been hunting between Vauterhill farm and Deptford farm, near High Bickington. One foot team saw an exhausted looking fox fleeing the area, luckily quite some distance from the hunt. Sabs made sure to cover their scent. Steve Craddock and his handful of field riders headed back to the meet as soon as we arrived, boxing up at 3pm.
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