After packing up the Eggesford Hunt earlier in the day, we headed to Hoarestone Cross north of Thorne Moor in north Devon to see what the Stevenstone Hunt were up to.
We got there a few minutes after the hunt had cast hounds into Vielstone Woods. Sabs deployed into the surrounding fields in the pouring rain to march this gang of wildlife criminals back to the shed where the rest of their haggard followers were lurking. The skies calmed and the sun came out just as the hounds were loaded into the lorry.
In what has become something of a ritual in recent weeks, we spent the next couple of hours having a picnic by the side of the road while watching the hunt huddle in the farmyard. Followers occasionally turned to glare in our direction, their frustration evident. At one point, huntsman Stephen James – tie oddly tucked into his trousers – put his hand on his hip, adopted the sourest of sour faces, and spoke at us at a volume completely lost to the wind. We could only guess at his words – perhaps something about sour grapes, sour apples, or a newfound interest in sourdough.
Eventually Stephen got in his pickup truck, drove out to the road and deliberately swerved into some of our foot sabs, before returning to where the hound van was parked to glare at us some more. After his goons had finally finished eating all the sausages they’d brought to the meet, they came to the road and lashed out as only grown men in Ridgeline jackets could – by throwing stones at sabs like toys from a pram, with Stephen leading the tantrum. It was a moment of poetic thuggery where the Stevenstone Hunt finally lived up to their name: Stephen throwing the orders, and the rest throwing the stones. Stoning, like foxhunting, belongs in the past, but when tradition is your only compass, regression is practically a rite of passage!
With our picnic finished and satisfied that they wouldn’t attempt to hunt again that evening, we left them to it.
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