Sabs help stag escape the Devon & Somerset Staghounds 30/10/25 скачать в хорошем качестве

Sabs help stag escape the Devon & Somerset Staghounds 30/10/25

Devon & Somerset Staghounds 30/10/25 Meet: Redgate, Exmoor. Sabs are becoming inundated with tip-offs from residents who are incensed by the suffering inflicted on the red deer stags of Exmoor. Similar information comes to us regarding the other two packs who gain excitement and pleasure from driving a stag to exhaustion. Observing a stag labouring across a field near the end of his life is distressing. Today on Exmoor, hard work by a small team of sabs looking over the shoulders of the staghunters, helped to save a stag. The other reason stag hunters went home empty-handed was the mistakes they made during the day. This, the last day on Autumn stags, fell apart from the first minute. Sabs arriving early scouted the area looking for stags almost certainly with a group of hinds as it is still the rutting season. Sabs found the hinds with a stag north of Blagdon Hill grazing peacefully. Quickly we decided to move them on to the cover of the woods of Egerdon Plantation, where we also knew other deer were residing. This would cause confusion and give the stag a chance. With this done successfully, we were dismayed to then see another large stag with hinds out in the open on the opposite side of the valley near Ditch Farm. Moments later the hunt were upon them sending them fleeing through a herd of cows. After much back and forth the stag appeared running on his own towards Egerdon Plantation where we sent the other stag. He looked knackered and was gasping for breath. A few minutes later hounds came on his scent, followed by a quad and riders. Now our earlier move appeared to pay off! The hunt went after the wrong stag - the one big one we had pushed down earlier, leaving the exhausted one to make his escape unseen towards the church at Withial Florey. This new stag, fresh as a daisy, ran effortlessly up the steep Blagdon Hill right past a sab and off towards Wimbleball Reservoir. He was last viewed running across fields above Huscombe Nature Reserve and the adjacent combe, where the hunt would next spend hours searching! Riders rode hard after the stag and after collecting the confused hounds the huntsman brought them forward to where the new stag had run. The hunt, believing they were on the original stag that must now be hiding exhausted, hunted down through the nature reserve to the upper reaches of Wimbleball Reservoir near Bessom Bridge, and back again, and then again! One sab moved down north from Blagdon Hill, before joining the hunt in the plantation after being ‘escorted’ off fields, the other found a footpath from Bessom Bridge to Hurscombe Nature Reserve overlooking the now depleted reservoir. Hurscombe Plantation, within the reserve, is a dense covert with ample places for a stag to hide. But here is the ‘rub’! The stag was not there! He was long gone in another direction and area from where they were looking. After looking for ages, with the obligatory thrashing around in the undergrowth on foot, the hunt decided to move out from the area. Trying to save face they moved back towards the meet, perhaps hoping to re-find the ‘disappearing stag’ of Blagdon Hill. They drew in Edgerton Plantation on their way back to Redgate. Could have told the huntsman the stag was not in there, but he did not ask! A good sabbing day that prevented the DSSH from repeating their killing of two stags last Saturday.