© 2024 Hunt Saboteurs Association
Last Saturday, multiple sab groups mobilised to disrupt the final meet of the Devon & Somerset Staghounds on Exmoor. While several deer were saved, sabs were unable to prevent the death of one stag who was hunted to exhaustion.
The hunt spent the morning using pairs of relay hounds to harass herds of hinds – female deer – across the Slade Hill area of Exmoor. At around 2:00pm, they turned their attention to a group of three stags. After harrying them for over fifty minutes, the hunters finally achieved their objective of separating out a single victim for pursuit. This lone stag was then relentlessly hunted for miles, his every move tracked and betrayed by a jeering army of hunt riders, thugs on quad bikes, and followers in cars.
Almost three gruelling hours later, the desperate stag was still running. Sensing a kill was imminent, the hunters became increasingly excited and aggressive, blocking the stag’s attempts to reach the River Barle and cheering as he crashed headlong into a fence, unable to summon the energy to clear it.
In the final act of this sick drama, the stag ran onto Westwater, then through Halscombe Allotment and Westwater Allotment. From here there was sadly no escape. After being turned yet again by screaming hunt supporters at Ball Bottom Bridge, he ran back downstream where he was blocked by more yet more hunt thugs. Utterly broken, he lay down in the water barely able to even raise his head.
As the hunt’s gunman approached, two brave sabs rushed in to intervene. Brandishing his shotgun, the gunman tried to barge a sab out the way in his desperation to kill. One sab managed to film, while the other tried to stop the kill. As the gunman loomed above him, the stag raised his head one final time, looked his killer in the eye, then was shot dead.
Car followers on the road began beeping their horns in jubilation, while down at the river hunt staff unceremoniously dragged the stag’s broken body out of the stream, over a fence and up a steep wooded slope. With sab cameras on them, they guiltily disappeared into the woods – like the cowards they are – to carve up the body and distribute the heart and feet as sick ‘trophies.’
An HSA spokesperson commented,
“The cruelty inflicted on this stag is unimaginable. He was chased to exhaustion over three hours and then blasted in the head. Just as sick is the hunt’s claim that this barbarity constitutes some kind of legitimate ‘Research and Observation’ activity. Anyone can see that – like all hunters – the stag killers are cynically and ruthlessly exploiting the Hunting Act’s loopholes so their cruel ‘sport’ can continue.
In the last few years, hunt saboteurs have put unprecedented efforts into exposing and sabotaging the Southwest’s three stag hunts. When the cycle of stag hunting starts up again in August, hunt saboteurs and the HSA will be doing everything we can to stop them”.
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