Filming hunts in the Cotswolds

Protecting the Wild Equipment Fund #17: Cotswold Hunt Sabs

As we wrote recently we reached a major milestone earlier this month: 500 paid subscribers here on Substack. Just a few weeks later that post is already very out of date!

That figure is now actually nearing 600, which is fantastic news for wildlife up and down the UK! Every single penny goes straight into our Protecting the Wild Equipment Fund - putting ‘eyes in the field’ and empowering people to protect British wildlife by providing groups with much-needed kit like radios, bodycams, trailcams - and of course camcorders.

Our last Equipment Fund post was about sending camcorders to the Cotswold Monitors, this one is about sending more camcorders to the same part of England - but this time to the Cotswold Hunt Sabs who will be focussing their new kit on the Vale of the White Horse Hunt, the Cotswold Hunt, the North Cotswold Hunt, the Ledbury Hunt, the Heythrop Hunt, and the Beaufort Hunt! So many hunts all out looking for foxes - makes you wonder just how any survive in what is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and a designated National Landscape with its own Recovery Plan (in which, incidentally, foxes are only mentioned in terms of predating Skylarks!).

This is open country with large areas dominated by the likes of self-professed 'fox hater' and professional loudmouth Jeremy Clarkson - his 'Diddly Squat' 'farm' regularly features in local HIT reports (and you may remember played host to a fundraiser for David Cameron's former hunt just a few weeks ago).

Entitlement abounds in this part of England. Little wonder we are so pleased to be able to help local groups when we can.

"We are a local Gloucestershire group called Cotswold Hunt Sabs. We are 100% self funding and have been running now for a few years. We try and do as much local work as we can and usually focus on the Vale of the White Horse (VWH) Hunt.

From top to bottom: Vale of White Horse Hunt, Beaufort Hunt, joint meet of the VWH and Ledbury Hunts.  All images Cotswold Hunt Sabs.

"In recent years we have been trying to help more local groups and sabbing The Beaufort, Cotswold, and North Cotswold Hunts and have also been involved in the Badger Cull for the last 10 years. We were desperate for better cameras so we could obtain better and more detailed footage to get evidence against the hunts. Protect The Wild has always been great in helping us, and we are overwhelmed that they offered to buy us two camcorders. This will help so much in our fight against wildlife crime."

We are so pleased to be able to support the Cotswold Hunt Sabs with the 4th and 5th camcorders we've sent out in four months. Thanks to your support there are now camcorders recording several hunts in the Cotswolds and across Yorkshire; monitors are better protected by bodycams on Salisbury Plain and in Somerset; there are trailcams set up in Derbyshire and West Yorkshire; and groups can keep in better contact with each other with radios in Shropshire, Cheshire, and East Yorkshire. Thank you!

• For more on the Cotswold Hunt Sabs visit their Facebook page and follow them on X/Twitter

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Protecting wildlife is difficult, takes huge personal sacrifice, and can be dangerous. That’s why we set up our Equipment Fund in the first place - so we could all come together and show just how much we value groups like the Cotswold Hunt Sabs and all the other groups we’ve been privileged to support since last summer.

We are only able to give much-needed equipment like these camcorders to monitors and organisations because of paid subscriptions on our Substack. While all our online content is free, any money we do receive from paid subscriptions is ringfenced and used to put ‘eyes in the field’. It’s a simple idea – but the best ideas usually are! If you’d like to know more we have explained it all in our post “What do we mean by “Empowering people to protect British wildlife“?

With your support we will be giving out many more pieces of equipment to groups over the coming months and years. And we will always keep you up to date with how you are directly helping wildlife!

• If you’re an individual or organisation working in the field and would like our support, please apply to our fund. Our T&Cs are here and use the online application form on the same page. We’d love to hear from you.