Veteran hunt saboteurs are recruiting scores of young volunteers in an unofficial lecture tour of Britain's universities. Some students of the travelling "school for sabs" are then sent by the Hunt Saboteurs' Association on training weeks to practise their guerrilla tactics.
Battle-hardened saboteurs deny teaching recruits to pull riders off horses or spray hounds to put them off the scent, but hunts fear that the foxhunting season, which starts today, may be one of the most vicious ever.
The last "training week", held in September in price Dorset hunting country, ended with 49 people being charged with offences ranging from disorderly conduct to assault.
The Hunt Saboteurs' Association claims there are about 1,000 dedicated activists - but up to 3,000 supporters on big hunting days like Boxing Day.
Last week The Sunday Times attended a two-hour lecture given to students at London University by Aubrey Thomas of the association, and one of the most experienced "sabs" in Britain.
Thomas used blackboard diagrams and an authentic รบ70 huntsman's horn to press home the key point that saboteurs succeed only when hounds mistake them for huntsmen. Saving foxes and hares from hounds needed subtle tactics. "Don't stop the hounds; keep making them go forward," Thomas explained after marking on the blackboard exactly where saboteurs should stand at the start of a meet.
"Never, never panic in the hunting field," he went on. "It is just a job. You are there to save the lives of animals.
"To call hounds you get behind them and use your voice," Thomas explained. "When you see their heads go up you know you have hit the right note for those hounds." The secret of successful "sabbing", he said, was to use the cries to keep the pack moving steadily in the wrong direction.
Thomas, 30, is a strict vegetarian who runs an airfreight business during the week and has spent his week-ends for the past 14 years disrupting hunts, seal culls and grouse-shooting. He claims that in the past four years no hunt he has visited has managed to kill its quarry. He says he has been arrested often, but never charged.
He warned the students that by following hunts across private land they would risk actions for trespass, and that if they damaged crops on the way they might be charged with criminal damage. "The idea of the game is to create as little hassle as possible, and just sabotage to save lives."
Emotion should not colour their "sabbing" however much they hated the pursuit of wild animals. "I would compare it to a game of chess," said Thomas. "If you do not understand the rules you can be more of a danger than a help to the animals you are trying to save."
Ken Toon of the Masters of Foxhounds' Association said saboteurs aimed to "cause bother at fewer meets, but in bigger numbers". Peter Atkinson of the British Field Sports Society said saboteurs were becoming more violent. "We are getting a hard core of fanatics, and the more violence and abuse there is, the greater the chance of hunt supporters losing their tempers."
