North West Hunt Saboteurs AssociationWest Sussex. Saturday, 6th February 1999. Around 1pm the hounds of the Chiddingfold, Leconfield & Cowdray Foxhunt scent a fox and give chase. When they finally bear down on the exhausted animal, only eighteen months old and the size of a terrier, it is no match for the hounds. Luckily, Andy, a local hunt saboteur is also there....
"When
I saw the hounds bite into the fox's backside, I knew I had to do something
and the only thing left was to jump in and rescue the fox myself. Grabbing
the fox distracted the hounds enough for them to let it go, but the
terrified fox bit me and I lost my hold...the fox saw its chance and
bolted down a rabbit burrow. Its tail was still poking out, so I sat
on the hole to stop the hounds from snapping at it. To my amazement,
a policeman lent me his helmet to plug the hole, and refused to let
the hunt dig out the fox and kill it. Even the police must have been
affected by the plight of this pathetic little creature! Eventually,
once the hunt had left, we got the fox into a travelling cage and raced
it to the vet's."
"Copper", irreverently named after the policeman
who helped in the rescue, was examined by wildlife vet, Richard Edwards,
who said the fox would have died without prompt treatment. However,
its life-threatening condition was not caused by the bites Copper
had received, but by extreme stress - caused by the prolonged chase
of the hunt. (He had even begun to bleed from his penis, evidence
of kidney damage due to trauma or extreme physical exhaustion.) After
medical treatment Copper spent some weeks recovering and recuperating
in a wildlife hospital. He was released, fit and well, into a non-hunting
area in March 1999.
Copper's case explodes the myth that a hunted fox is either killed 'by
a quick nip to the back of the neck' or gets
away. The bite marks to Copper's hind legs - and Andy's eye-witness account
- show that 
hounds will snap at any part of a hunted fox to bring it
down. His general condition is proof that, as in the case of hunted stags
(highlighted in the 1997 Bateson Report), hunted foxes suffer intolerable
levels of stress as a direct result of the chase itself. The hunting
fraternity have always known this. In 1960, Lord Paget wrote: "Pain and
suffering is inflicted on animals in the name of sport. Nobody who has
seen a beaten fox dragging his stiff limbs into the ditch in which he
knows he will soon die, can doubt this proposition."
That's why, although Copper's rescue was successful, Andy doesn't consider February 6th a good day's sabbing. "For us a good day is one where the hunt don't get to chase an animal at all" he explains.
Covering scent with a mixture of water and citronella oil, or using horn calls to draw the hounds away from a hunted animal are both tactics used by saboteurs to stop a chase before it even begins! Until hunting is banned, the only chance animals like Copper have to evade a cruel and terrifying death, is people like Andy.
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