Heythrop New Year's Day 2026

***Blatant fox hunting near Upper Slaughter and toxic masculinity***
Heythrop Hunt,
Stow on the Wold,
New Year's Day, Thursday 1st January 2025.
After a long meet in the town square Master/huntsman Oliver Dale made a speech about how they are all being persecuted, some nonsense about how they are hunting trails. He then went off to find foxes to hunt. First stop was Slaughter Woods and then up to the quarry just north of Nether Swell Manor. They did not appear to do much from what could be seen and heard.
There is a small unnamed covert between Slaughter Woods and Upper Slaughter. Ideal fox habitat which they went on to draw, I.e put hounds in to find a fox to hunt. Several deer ran out and one of us looked across to where kennel huntsman Josh Tierney was on point. A fox did try and get out and was frightened back towards hounds by the wall of hunt support on the road who were all very loud talking to one another. A 999 call was made to Gloucestershire police and whilst on that call the fox summoned up the courage to run. Hounds were stopped. A fox, maybe the same one with a white distinctive chest, then ran to Upper Slaughter and back the other side of the wood and was filmed. They stopped the hounds and then Josh Tierney lifted the pack to take them back into the unnamed wood where the fox had run.
A word on “lifting”, the hounds are gathered and then taken to where the hunted fox is thought to have gone. This is often done if sabs have a fox on film, if the hounds are filmed on that same line, it’s damning evidence, potentially. Stopping them and then lifting them on into a wood is a sneaky way of just continuing to attempt to hunt that fox. Sadly they did find the scent again and were hunting around the house at Kirkham Farm for a considerable amount of time, owned by Lis Wills, a former master.
They second horsed at the dairy and the farmhouse before going into Granny’s Bank Coppice. A man started being verbally aggressive to a sab, let’s just say he did no favours to the hunting fraternity, it was woke this, woke that, the c word and so forth. Meanwhile at Granny’s they found a fox and hunted back towards Upper Slaughter.
There was a brief foray into the Quarries north of Swell and finishing up at Bank’s Fee Rough where they hunted until gone 16.00. Angry man came back with more misogyny and this time he had made up a lovely story about the sab’ being targeted being anti hunt because she was bitter that her “husband had left her”. One of the Heythrop stalking team, Miranda, soon put a stop to all that by telling him to leave sabs alone and he didn’t argue!! Spoiler, marriage is not something the sab’ concerned has ever been interested in! Frustrating day with hundreds of support and very blatant fox hunting.
We urge that our supporters write to their MPs asking when the Hunting Act consultation and following legislation will take place.
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See you in the fields! 3C