We joined up with Plymouth and West Devon Sabs, and Hunt Audits Southwest to visit the Dartmoor hunt at their miserable roadside meet near Bloody Pool, South Brent. After waiting for Terrierman Alex Wass to arrive and scoffing down as many sausage rolls as they could squeeze down their throats, the hunt set off and headed towards Gidley Bridge, and into Dockwell Plantation.
With sabs positioned all around, huntsman Harry Gosling drew the hounds through the plantation. It was here a fox was seen taking refuge in a patch of gorse near sabs. Thankfully the hounds never picked up the line and, due to the thick fog, the hunt had no clue either.
From the plantation, the hunt entered the moor and set off south west in the direction of Dockwell Ridge. It wasn’t long before hounds were heard in cry around Shipley Tor and a dog walker reported that hounds had chased a fox across Dartmoor Way.
It was at this point everything started to go wrong for Gosling, as when he crossed onto Black Tor, he only appeared to have a fraction of the pack. In the thick fog he struggled to even maintain this level.
Then, terrierman Wass alongside Emily Harland (who appears to have abandoned her terrierman boyfriend Ben Vincent for Wass..) rode past sabs on the Dartmoor way and entered up onto Brent Moor.
Foot sabs headed back up onto the moor in pursuit of the hunt. We caught up with Gosling, his much smaller field and about 3 hounds lost in the fog in the valley south of Huntingdon Warren.
Gosling was desperately trying to call for his hounds and eventually managed to grow the pack to around half a dozen or so hounds. He then decided that rather than look for the remaining hounds, he would continue to draw the gorse in the area of Hickaton Hill. We also encountered a redcoat here barking down the phone at someone, asking if anyone had seen some of the many wayward hounds.
Sabs briefly heard hounds speaking nearby before Gosling took the hunt down to Dean Moor and back in the direction of the meet, where they packed up at around 5pm. We’re unsure if they managed to find the rest of the hounds by this point.
Hunt staff aren’t known for their critical thinking ability, but it doesn’t take much work to realise that taking 30+ hounds onto the vast moorland of Dartmoor in thick fog is a bad idea. We’d like to think it was a learning experience for Gosling but we don’t have our hopes up.
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