Not Fox Hunting in the uk!

Not Fox Hunting in the UK!

Since the Fox Hunting Act of 2004, all the Dartmoor hunts have always acted within the law. They conduct what's called Trail Hunting, or Exempt Hunting. Sometimes it involves an owl; and always a couple of loyal hunt members are out laying trails across the most interesting and spectacular parts of the moor, while everybody else is happily knocking back a port or two at the meet.

It means that there are now more foxes living happily on the moor than ever, and you're bound to see one or two, if you come to Wydemeet to stay for a hunting break.

After my success with Horse & Hound Magazine, I've now been invited to write a feature for www.Foxhuntinglife.com, which is the leading specialist foxhunting website in the States.  

Did you know that there are more than 150 foxhunts in America? They are more English than English, with all the same turnout, including the tweed, the requisite collars and numbers of buttons on their hunt coats etc, the meets, the hunting calls...  And you really wouldn't know that their photos weren't taken over here!

I was chatting to a guest visiting from New Jersey last Tuesday,  and she said there will never be a ban in the States, because hunting and guns are such a part of their culture.  Apparently they hunt coyotes, as well as several different kinds of foxes, but, certainly in the case of my new friend's hunt, not far from New York, their country is much smaller.

I do hope our guests had the day of a lifetime, riding for over twenty miles across the most glorious countryside, out in the sunshine with the Dartmoor!