We sabbed twice on Saturday! First in the morning, when one of us teamed up with a Mendip sab to hassle the Eggesford Hunt at their 7am meet at Lower Gorhuish near Northlew, and then in the evening when we shut down the Stevenstone Hunt’s cubbing attempts at Hoarestone near Thorne Moor in North Devon.

As we’re used to with Eggesford, their early morning cubbing meet was full of blatant illegal foxhunting. Riders held up coverts by positioning themselves strategically around the edges, slapping their saddles to make noise, supported by foot followers who bashed sticks on fence posts to scare back any foxes trying to escape. These are things even the BHSA have advised hunts not to do during cubbing, because it makes it so obvious they’re hunting foxes. Huntsman Jason Marles also did the usual tongue-rolling, trying to rouse a fox from covert. Several foxes were seen over the course of the morning and our presence and intervention helped those we saw get away.

A young, terrified fox was seen running along the inside of South Moor Plantation, desperately trying to find a place to escape. The pack were hunted onto this fox, who darted from one covert to another with hounds gradually gaining on them. We’ll be posting the video footage later and you’ll see how the Mendip sab had just run in to cover one fox’s scent near the lake by the farm when a second fox ran across the track next to the sab. Hounds arrived in full cry on that fox’s line. Instead of calling hounds off the fox, Eggesford’s Duncan Tucker sat on his horse filming the sab, whose expert rating and whip-cracking lifted the hounds’ heads and bought both foxes crucial time.

On Tuesday evening we received a call that Eggesford were cubbing at South Farm, Ashreigney. We mobilised, got to the area an hour later and were greeted by a distressed roe deer fawn on the road adjacent to the valley the hounds were in. The poor deer ran along the road desperately trying to crash through the hedge into the next field.

While our drone went up to pinpoint the location of the hounds, sabs went in on foot. They found hounds in cry piling into a hedge and heading into the woods towards a badger sett the hunt like to dig out. We prevented a digout there just a few months ago, at the end of last season. When he arrived at the sett, Jason and his minion Jade Howarth found sabs already waiting there for them.

Jason gathered up the hounds and walked them back to the meet to pack up a couple of hours before he would have liked.

A week after pissing off all the locals in Ingleigh Green by cub-hunting on land without permission, Eggesford huntsman Jason Marles took a leaf out of the Dulverton Farmers’ book yesterday evening by not even attempting to hunt in the presence of sabs.

We bumped into him on the way to the meet and as soon as he saw us he turned the fully loaded hound van around and drove it back to the kennels.

We stuck around to make sure he didn’t sneak back out and enjoyed another roadside picnic! Job done.

Eggesford Hunt are not welcome in Monkokehampton and Ingleigh Green

The annual fox cub killing spree has started. The hunting world would like us all to refer to it simply as ‘autumn hunting’, to hide the cruel reality of their ‘sport’. Acting on a tipoff, a small team of sabs paid a visit to Eggesford Hunt’s cubbing meet at Ingleigh Green on Saturday evening, where it turns out most of the locals despise the hunt.

They met at 6pm in a field belonging to Peter Fishleigh of Lower Ingleigh and spent the next two hours mostly hunting on land they had no permission to be on, according to practically every farmer and landowner we came across. Two sabs followed Jason and his whipper-in Jade on foot, while we also filmed the hunt from the air by drone. We documented plenty of evidence of hunt supporters driving their vehicles into crop fields against the farmers’ wishes, huntsman Jason Marles casting hounds into hedges next to horse paddocks, causing those horses to freak out, and hounds hunting through some of the densest scrub you could imagine. We’ll share a short video soon to give you an idea of what foot sabs had to wade through to follow the route taken by the pack.