2000
September
Although the main season starts around the beginning of November, hunts every year start early morning cubbing around the beginning of September. The first meet of the cubbing season was the 2nd. Derby travelled down to support Wolves with the Albrighton and its new huntsman. We set off at around 4.30 in the morning! A combination of the top horn-blowing skills of a Wolves sab and our new vehicle mounted gizmo successfully prevented them from any serious attempts of hunting. There had been rumours of new hunt staff with outstanding assault charges but apart from one terrier-boy on a quad attempting to run sabs over on a bridleway, the day was uneventful. (When we returned home we learnt of the vicious attack on Steve Christmas.)
We picked up Notts, and joined Leicester to do the Quorn the next two weeks around the Stanford-on-Soar/East Leak area. The Quorn (stewardless again) got back to what they know best by putting in some genuinely awful cubbing sessions under new huntsman, Dick Mould. Not supplied with the necessary diagrams, the huntsman seemed unsure of what he was actually supposed to be hunting, with sabs having to pull his hounds off assorted hares and rabbits. One hare was sadly killed despite our best efforts. Not exactly the stuff of fox-hunting legend... With the stewards gone, aggro towards sabs was restricted to what looked like a Weeble, basically threatening to sit on a sab. Nice.
We joined Wolves on a kennel watch of the Albrighton the next week. Perhaps with having to face the humiliation of being made to look like complete amateurs by local sabs, they decided not to go out.
October
Trying to find a reason to lie in bed to a more civilised hour, we decided to honour the High Peak with a visit at their opening meet. (11.30 - luxury!) The hunt was unsuccessful and packed up around 1.00, when thick fog rolled in.
We felt it was time to join the Meynell, who must have been feeling neglected by this time. Wolves came up to support us and both groups were gobsmacked at the huge amount of Support for an early morning meet. Numbers didn't help them however, when some great horn-blowing and the vehicle-gizmo prevented the pack from penetrating a single covert all morning. (We overheard one of the whippers-in jokingly remark that one sab was a better horn-blower than them and should be offered a job!)
Starting to run short of the readies we made a surprise visit to the local Quorn the next week at Osgathorpe. Despite the distracting sound of hundreds of neglected and upset beagles in the Harlan Animal Breeding Compound, Derby, Notts, and Leicester successfully prevented any kills.
November
A lack of funds and floods meant that it wasn't until mid-November that Derby went out again and travelled down to the Albrighton FH and helped Wolves do the necessary. Then it was back to the Quorn at Osgathorpe who were no better than previous hits on them but gained their first kill in front of sabs for over 12 months. With the ground totally water-logged, the fox was put up and chopped almost instantly right outside Harlan. There was nothing sabs could do and the hunt looked genuinely surprised to have killed. The rest of the day, sabs more than adequately dealt with hunt attempts to add to their tally.
December
We felt it was time to give the Meynell another visit, as they had taken it upon themselves to meet at Hoar Cross (barely 4 weeks after sabs had destroyed them there at a cubbing meet). Wolves again travelled up and the hunt spent most of the day running away from sabs and sabs spent most of the trying to navigate their way through the usual mass freak-show that is the Meynell Support. A couple of the more lively ones even rubbed a couple of brain cells together and found they could actually block-in the sab landy! Well done lads - now try and concentrate on forming sexual relationships with non-family members... No kills, plenty of good horn-blowing from sabs and if huntsman Greenall splits his hounds any more the whole hunt will have to fragment again.
The High Peak was visited again at Sparklow the following week. Barry must have been feeling under the weather that day, as he split his pack as badly as Greenall the previous week...
Little known and even less sabbed DNS Beagles were visited in mid-December and seemed shocked to see sabs - even sending someone over to check if we were actually, shock...horror...gulp...there to sab them? ...Not from what we saw were they worth it. Before the huntsman had even finished tying his boots and while one of the whips was still putting on his santa hat (don't ask) the hounds, tired of waiting, ran off on a trail of a passing hare, leaving the hunt staff a good 3-4 fields away scratching their heads. Sabs managed to intercept them, temporarily stopping their mad chase but the hounds were totally unresponsive to horn or voice calls - not that the huntsman fared any better. A whole 15 minutes passed after hounds had lost the trail before they finally came back to the meet where the huntsman had given up running after them and had been making farting sounds with his horn.
The hunt then packed up and drove to a local pub, followed by sabs. Here they parked up, called the police and waited for them to turn up for the nasty sabs. We hadn't even done anything yet! A good 30 minutes of sitting around passed before South Staffs finest turned up to do the customary roadside MOT and interrogation routine - accusing sabs of 'stalking' the hunt! During all this the hunt sneaked off to another meet and despite sab efforts weren't found again. Clearly the hunt have no confidence in their own ability to compete with sabs head to head. Aah, diddums... Sabs moved onto the Meynell for the rest of the day, but the less said about this the better. Ta to Notts and Leicester for coming to pull our sorry ass Landy out of some mud...
A mid-week meet of the Meynell was sabbed just before Xmas. The support was unusually thin on the ground - probably something to do with a London L and L March the same week.