“A man unlike any other is roaming in the pastures,” a trapper complains to the king in The Epic of Gilgamesh. “He helps the wild game to escape; he fills in my pits, and pulls up my traps.”
Four thousand years after humanity chiselled its first story in cuneiform, I’m in the car park of Hawkesbury Upton’s village hall. I’m about to meet Weasel, who’s not a man “unlike any other”. She’s a retired teacher in her seventies who enjoys playing golf and singing in a choir.
Like Enkidu in the ancient tale, however, she spends much of her time liberating animals, filling in pits, and pulling up traps. Weasel is a hunt saboteur: one of hundreds across the UK who, since 1964, have staged weekly interventions in the countryside to save foxes, mink, hares and stags from grisly fates.
In an hour’s time, horses and hounds will sweep across 54,000 acres of South Gloucestershire countryside for the Beaufort Hunt’s “closing meet” – the final “trail hunting” outing of the season, and possibly the last ever. If the government gets its way, this technically legal practice, in which hounds are said to follow pre-laid trails of fox urine rather than live animals, will be banned.
Our discreet meeting point was chosen for a reason: park anywhere more conspicuous, Weasel warns, and you risk having your tyres slashed by hunt supporters.
Weasel sits behind the wheel. In the back is Emma, 38. “Emma’s the fastest sab in the West,” says Weasel of the team's spotter, who'll range ahead alone to track the hunt’s movements. Lynn rides shotgun. She is also in her seventies, and out sabbing five or six times a week.
“You can’t sit at home,” she says. “You have to get out and do something.”
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