Blood On His Hand: Terrierman Caught Blocking Badger Sett

Covert footage has been passed to the HSA showing a member of the South Shropshire Hunt blocking a badger sett. Several members of the same hunt are due in court this coming Tuesday on charges of badger sett interference.

The footage, taken at the end of October, shows hunt terrierman William Hand – previously employed by the Pytchley Hunt – encouraging his white Jack Russell-cross terrier into the badger sett to check for the presence of a fox. The terrier is fitted with a locator collar, which allows Hand to track their progress underground. When no fox is found, Hand blocks up the sett with his spade.

The next day the hounds are put over the woodland sett searching for a fox, while huntsman Daniel Cherriman – who has previously been convicted of illegal fox hunting – is heard blowing his horn in the adjacent field. The hounds are called out of the wood in a hurry – likely as a fox has been seen fleeing – and the hunt ride off. At around 3pm later that day, a very tired fox is seen attempting to seek refuge at the blocked sett.

What is Earth Stopping?

The first line of defence for a hunted fox is to ‘go to earth’ – to seek refuge underground. But this is a serious impediment to the hunters, who want to enjoy the spectacle of a terrified fox being chased across open country.

The job of the terriermen is therefore to trap foxes above ground on the day of the hunt. They achieve this by visiting all known fox earths, badger setts, and other potential refuges the day or night before the hunt and ‘stopping’ them – filling them in – with earth or other material. On hunt day, the fox will make for a known refuge, find it blocked, and be forced to run on, thus producing the extended chase that the subscribers are paying for.

As leading fox hunter JNP Watson put it in his Book of Foxhunting:

“Since the object of foxhunting is to kill foxes and to provide sport, clearly known earths must, if possible, be blocked. The Master, or his delegate, duly arranges that, if possible, in the country over which he proposes to draw, all earths within a comparatively small radius of the meet are stopped the night before hunting. Certain earths will be ‘put to’ in the early morning.”

An HSA spokesperson commented,

“This video only adds to the mountain of evidence that so-called trail hunts are behaving exactly as they did before the 2004 Hunting Act. It goes without saying that terriermen such as Hand have no place on a ‘trail hunt’ and that hunts are therefore engaged in illegal fox hunting. We urgently need the Labour government to act on their manifesto commitment to ban trail hunting, end terrierwork and close the Hunting Act’s many loopholes.”