A few weeks ago we sabbed a Stevenstone Hunt meet at Great Gorwood, together with Plymouth & West Devon Hunt Sabs.
We sent the drone up and spotted hounds hunting a fox to ground near Park Farm. Foot sabs were deployed to clear the hounds out and have a nice chat with terriermen Ben Vincent (the one we filmed digging a fox out of a badger sett at the Axe Vale last year) and David Lawrence. There’s a 50/50 chance of finding either of these two with their heads down any hole in Devon. They admitted there was a fox gone to ground and wanted to debate the legality of hounds marking a badger sett. Not even pretending any more, are they?
The hunt spent the rest of the morning hunting Park Farm and Park Moor. While sabs were busy dealing with the first marked sett, our drone filmed hounds bolting a fox from a thick hedge. The fox ran right past huntsman Stephen James. Two hounds were allowed to pursue the fox and Stephen can be seen in our footage encouraging the rest of the pack to join them. The fox disappeared into a very thick hedge at the junction between several fields and sadly we did not see them reemerge. Unfortunately we are not sure whether this fox went to ground and survived or was killed by hounds in the hedge.
After riding around and performing a bit of “hilarious” pantomime for us, Stephen headed back to the meet, abandoning several hounds. Sabs went to investigate the loud and continuous crying and found a hound trapped in a barbed wire fence, which had become badly twisted around her paw. ‘Shimmer’ had clearly been stuck for a while, so her paw was quite swollen. She also had a chunk of her tail missing. Several other lost hounds were still hanging around in the fields as well. Stephen eventually returned on a quad along with Ben Vincent and we called him over to help release the hound. We hope she recovered, as she was badly limping when they drove off with her. We so often come across hounds trapped on barbed wire, sometimes long after the hunt have moved on or gone home for the day. They are the forgotten victims of the hunt.
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