About a Month Back, Sheffield Hunt Sabs and Others Caught the Northern Counties Hunt Disturbing the Peace of the Beautiful, Otter Rich River Esk. the Half Dozen Hunters High Tailed It Back to Their Vehicles As Soon As Sabs Were Spotted.
But summer sabbing hasn’t always been easy. Let’s take a look back at the history of this hunt and the wider story it tells of the decline of mink hunting.
The Northern Counties Hunt – originally named the West Yorkshire Mink Hounds – was formed in 1980 by a group of lads led by current Holme & Colne Valley Beagles master Wayne O’Brien, who had been brought up fox hunting and beagling in the southern Pennines. Wayne’s dad took care of the finances, and the pack were kennelled near the village of Slaithwaite.
The 1980s were very different times. Otter hunting had only just been banned and the British Field Sports Society (the original and more honest name for the Countryside Alliance) were desperately touting mink hunting as the next big thing. By the mid-1980s there were about twenty mink hunts around the country – some hunting mink, others using the practice as a cover – a smokescreen – to continue hunting otters.
The media were also whipping up hysteria about mink being ‘alien invaders’, ignoring the fact that the country was littered with ramshackle fur farms, whose escapees provided the quarry. The largest of these – the foul Hawkyard Mink Farm – was just a few miles up the road from the WYMH kennels.
Like all mink packs, the WYMH were extremely secretive, but they were infiltrated by hunt sabs in 1986 and a meet card was obtained. At one June meet that year, sabs susutained serious spade-inflicted injuries as they stopped a dig-out on the River Ribble, with the resulting brawl and mass arrests making the front cover of our magazine HOWL. Another card was secured in 1988 and there were further eventful sab outings as a result.
In November 1989, the pack was renamed the Northern Counties Hunt to reflect its vastly expanded territory which now ran from Nottinghamshire right up into Northumberland. With such a huge country, the hunt would often go on tour, with supporters turning out when the pack was in their area rather than driving huge distances to make every meet.
Fast forward to 2014 at the Green Tree Inn, Little Ouseburn and the Northern Counties – like many mink packs that summer– were sabbed for the first time in decades. They were approached with caution but quickly retreated into the pub and drew the curtains – a far cry from the more spade-led approach they had favoured in the 1980s.
The hunt has been sabotaged every season since and is now in terminal decline. After many years of stable kennelling at the Grove & Rufford Hunt, the pack were passed around the kennels of several northern fox hunts who all appeared reluctant to accommodate them. Most tellingly of all, while the hunt has retained its huge country, it is the same few faces that turn up at every meet.
The Northern Counties are one of just half a dozen mink packs still clinging to existence today. Even the hunters don’t have the bare-faced cheek to pretend to be “trail hunting” in the middle of a river, so they claim they are “hunting rats and rabbits, “exercising hounds” or conducting “riverbank surveys.”
This cynical nonsense is one of the reasons that the HSA is pushing to close all the exemptions of the Hunting Act – join our campaign here!
We are the only organisation that works directly in the field to save wildlife through direct action.
