2005
November
The opening meet of the High Peak was attended with a show of support for the Manchester sab who had been attacked the previous season. The attacker had just been found not guilty which is a complete farce as yet again video evidence showed him committing the act. The High Peak had fired the hunt master.
October
There is no way a hunt can legally cub-hunt with the new legislation as it is illegal to flush a covert with more than 2 hounds. Some hunts had decided to get around this by exploiting a bizarre loop hole that allows them to flush a covert with the whole pack if it is with the intention of flushing the fox to a waiting bird of prey. Quite clearly this is not in the hunt's interests but is used to cover their illegal activies within the woodland. Both the Quorn and Blankney Hunt (East of Nottingham) had declared their intentions to use a bird of prey so Derby and Nottingham decided to concentrate on these two hunts. In addition, locals had given us extensive information on both hunts which always makes our task easier. Due to vehicle problems and also some undercover monitoring the first time we really went out in force was for the Quorn opening meet in late October at Osgathorpe. The riders seemed good humoured at the start acknowledging one sab by name but not, I feel, as a purely friendly gesture. The foot/car support wasn't quite so friendly with much blocking in and the odd thump on the sab van bodywork. At first the hunt seemed to be trail hunting from the hunt meet, but they soon crossed the B-road and headed for some large woods near the A42. They went around the back of the Harlan Compound (or Hillcrest as it is now called to shirk off the animal abuse scandal a few years ago) and crossed over the B-road again. A bird-of-prey (an Eagle Owl) was then dragged out and the hunt beat along hedgerows towards the bird. They may have paid a few thousand for the bird but they didn't have a bird-handler, so the poor owl spent most of its time dangling by its tethered foot upside-down from someone's arm thrashing its wings in a mad panic. There was no change of horses and the hunt packed up early at about 2pm. (We found this early finish was consistent throughout the season.)
September
There was quite a reasonable turnout of people from Derby for the victory march around Burton-on-Trent following the announced closure of the Newchurch Guinea-pig farm on the 23rd of August. There were many stalls including Speak, Shac and of course the Newchurch campaign who were selling Saved the Newchurch Guineapigs T-shirts! Veggies of Nottingham for some reason had not been allowed to have a hot food trailer and had brought a good selection of colds drinks and snacks. The sun came out about noon as if joining in the celebrations so nobody missed the hot burgers!It was good to meet up with some old and new faces alike in a relaxed atmosphere. Members of Leicester and Loughborough Animal Concern were present whose campaign against Harlan has been running even longer than Newchurch. There were a fair number of hunt saboteurs present from groups all over the North of England - all looking as bleary-eyed as us after monitoring cub hunts early the same morning. Besides the regular faces from the Environmental Policing Unit which has been going almost as long as the campaign, there were also representatives from Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire police who have long-running AR campaigns within their own county boundaries.
There were some really emotive speeches from some of campaign veterans and it suddenly became clear how much they had sacrificed to keep the pressure on the Hall family. Some of the many messages of support from around the world were also read out. After the speeches, came the slow somber march around the centre of Burton and then all hell broke loose on the second lap with the use of drums, whistles, horns and sirens. Despite the hate campaign run by almost every mainstream media source in the country against the Newchurch protesters the response from the general public was either positive or at least neutral. Only a small portion of the most ignorant chav gave any abuse - one of them being arrested!
Summer
Besides endless 'after the ban' parties throughout the country, some members found time (while nursing hangovers) to aid the much persecuted badger population in the Staffordshire Moorlands. A huge area of setts were saved from the annual illegal attentions of DEFRA. Each year more and more activists are getting involved and encouragingly, local people outraged by the actions of DEFRA are getting involved in the killing areas as well.
August the 13th marked the traditional Grouse shoot sab and this year about 50 sabs descended on the moorlands on the Duke of Westminster's Estate in Lancashire.
Visibility was poor and normal road access to the moors was pretty non-existent, so we were worried that we may not find the shoot. As one of the few groups who turned up in a 4WD we were assigned the green lane that cut directly across the moors. Half way along we got the call the shoot had been found. A combination of the weather and large numbers of sabs discouraged the shoot from going out in the morning. Unfortunately the police blocked the sab vehicles in and allowed the shoot to escape to a different location in the afternoon which we never found.
March
Derby and Nottingham attended the Belvoir Hunt at Hose in Leicestershire. If the hunt was intending to hunt properly we anticipated the coverts which would be drawn first and laid-in-wait. As it turned out they had no such intent. The Field went for a hack and the hounds were boxed up after the initial meet. The Derby driver was sitting quietly at the entrance to the meet while this was being done and a number of the huntstaff came over to give him some abuse. Just as it was starting to get heated a mass of sabs from Sheffield turned up which calmed things down!
It was clear that the Belvoir Hunt were not intending to hunt so we decided to head over to the Atherstone Hunt which was only 10-20 miles further west at Shackerstone. Within minutes of us finding them, the hunt were coming out from a wooded bridleway and the hounds shot off in pursuit of a fox. The huntsman eventually managed to summon up the effort to call the pack back which I'm sure was nothing to do with the fact that he had 2 camcorders trained on him at the time! He continued to run the pack loose and therefore it was no surprise when the pack again went into cry. Sabs went into the field at this point as did a number of hunt support 4x4's who were "clearly up-for-it". The hunt was packing up at this point (because of us?). Again there was insufficient evidence but at least we prevented any kills after we turned up.
February
The next time we went out was on the 19th of February after the ban and as reported on the homepage was fairly uneventful. The pack did pick up the scent of one fox and as usual resulted in the pack splitting. The huntsman did however do a good job of calling them back and continued with their hack across the country. This shows that the ban can work without the loss of jobs and due to their own actions any appeal they try will obviously fail. The CA are simply throwing money away on their team of fancy London lawyers - especially when there are some real rural issues that need addressing.
The next week we supported Sheffield at the Badsworth Hunt on the North Yorkshire border. This hunt was pushing their luck as far as they could. They showed some unhealthy interest in some local coverts at first but when they were aware that sabs were present, they shot off and the sabs in the field struggled to keep up. We failed to gather sufficient evidence for a prosecution but due to the hunt moving fast for most of the day it is unlikely they killed anything.
January
Compared to many local groups who continued to go out solidly even after the ban was declared, the Derby group chose to take a break from its normal activities. We recognised the potential for almost every hunt to kick off and we were not disappointed in January when we supported other sab groups at a meet of the Grove and Rufford Hunt. Supporters at this hunt have assaulted people before as reported in previous diaries. The previous time they were careful to do this out of the view of the general public but this time they didn't care! Riders attempted to ride sabs down in the middle of local villages and the Derby vehicle was attacked while driving home in heavy traffic on the A616 by an Escort full of baseball bat-wielding thugs. This almost caused a serious RTA and was yet further evidence that some hunters have little regard for animal and human life! Sabs also had to defend themselves on a number of occasions from the thuggish behaviour of this hunt and did well to save the lives of a number of foxes that day. There were no kills.