Eggesford’s opening meet was another roadside meet at Chulmleigh Beacon. Riding helmet tucked under his arm, Jason showed everyone his freshly-polished head while giving his annual speech to mark the start of the main hunting season.

As the hunt set off, terrierboy Tom Bounsall reversed his quad at speed straight at one of our sabs on the road, pinning her against a parked car and narrowly avoiding seriously injuring her.

Just as he did during the cubbing season in this area, Jason started the day by entering hounds into a field of beets just off Parsonage Cross. Unsurprisingly, a fox was flushed within minutes. The fox ran out across the road and back again, followed closely by the pack who by now were in full cry and being hunted-on by Jason. Sabs stopped some of the hounds on the road but the bulk of the pack were running at speed towards Parsonage Copse, where the fox eventually went to ground at a badger sett. Our presence ensured this fox was not dug out. As sabs were rating hounds off the badger sett, a frustrated Jason jumped off his horse and began filming sabs on his phone, accusing them of interfering with his hounds… while he was continuing to allow the hounds to interfere with the badger sett!

We sabbed Eggesford Hunt twice in the last week. On Saturday they met at South Farm on the edge of Ashreigney, where they sadly killed a sheep.

The hunt started in the valley west of the village. Hounds usually get onto foxes pretty easily in this valley and unsurprisingly they spent a lot of time in cry here. Foot teams kept tabs on the hounds while a beautiful bushy-tailed fox ran out of the valley and right past our vehicle. We covered the fox’s scent and prevented hounds from following. Sometimes it feels as though the foxes know who their allies are!

The hunt then crossed the road back onto the side of the meet and into the valley between Densham Plantation and the edge of the village. Hounds started chasing a sheep who had become separated from the rest of the flock. The hunt did nothing to intervene and when foot sabs caught up to the flock about 10 minutes later they sadly found this sheep dead in the field, still warm and eyes wide open. There were no signs of bite marks but she did have an injured foot and we suspect she had probably died of shock. The intense fear from being chased by 30-odd dogs likely triggered a fight or flight response, flooding her body with adrenaline and other stress hormones, raising her heart rate and blood pressure and eventually leading to circulatory collapse.

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.

Eggesford Hunt ended the season last Thursday with a replay of their opening meet: a pathetic roadside gathering at Chulmleigh Beacon, followed by an attack on sabs and a digout of a fox.

The main difference? Many of the quad riders, without whom Jason wouldn’t have had any luck finding a fox in the warm, dry weather, had to be drafted in from other hunts. Alongside Richard Elliott and Jake Crabb, Rhys and Matt Welham came across from the Silverton Hunt, and a group of masked morons arrived in a work van with the signage “ALS Civil Engineering” (a company based in Kent). One of their quads was transported in the back of the van. Two of this group later used their quad to ride down one of our sabs.

Jason’s own quad following has dropped over the course of the season. Terriermen Tom Leary and Seward Folland don’t show their faces much anymore, with the former deciding to spend more time at the Mid Devon, and Seward often going home after a couple of hours on the rare occasion he decides to show up. Jason’s latest kennelman, Ash Symons, left this season after only a few months with the hunt, which at this point is pretty on-brand for Marles. He’s now been replaced with Jade, who seems to be attached at the hip to Jake Crabb when out with the hunt.