Last Saturday, intrepid Devon County sabs attended a rare meet of the Exe Valley Buckhounds at Shillingford, Mid Devon. This pack is one of two remaining hunts who target roe deer.
However, with sabs in attendance, the hunt simply rode around a few fields before packing up early – job done.

Devon County’s action has shone a spotlight on buck hunting – one of the dirtiest secrets of the hunting world. Roe deer are small Bambi-like creatures who have no hope of evading a pack of hounds. After being chased to exhaustion, they are simply torn apart by the hounds or have their throat slashed by a member of the hunt.
Even the sadists who run the ‘Masters of Deerhounds Association’ do not want to be associated with the buck hunters and booted them out of their organisation after a succession of botched kills and drownings were caught on film in the 1990s.

The other surviving pack are the Cheldon Buckhounds, also from Devon. When sabs last attended this nasty hunt in summer 2016, they were attacked by a large gang of tooled-up thugs. Despite extreme violence from the hunt – in which two sabs were hospitalised with serious head injuries – brave sabs made sure no deer were killed.

There was once a third pack of buckhounds operating the New Forest, but they were shut down in 1997 after a concerted campaign of sabbing lasting many years. For the sake of Devon’s persecuted wildlife, we hope the Exe Valley and Cheldon Buckhounds will go the same way.
Please support Devon County’s Hunt Saboteurs work against buck hunting and all other blood sports here.