Hit Report: Connacht Sabs: Violence from the Galway Blazers

Hit Report

22 Feb

The Galway Blazers, Turloughmore, County Galway.

After receiving a tip off from a number of concerned locals that the Blazers would be in town, we promptly headed straight for Turloughmore.

Upon arrival huntsman Anthony Costello blocked in our landy, double parking on a busy main road. Once his friends arrived a bit of pushing ensued from the hunters, two of them very nearly pushing a sab out in front of oncoming traffic.

After about 30mins of a delay huntsman took off running down the road to start the hunt he had delayed with his embarrassing attempt to stop us. Hunt moved off and sabs immediately gave chase. Huntsman Anthony attempted to flush immediately but to no avail.

Sabs kept with hunt for about 45 minutes until we were walking down a public road and were blocked by a number of supporters (an illegal act in itself). Full interaction of that can be seen here.

Hounds spoke briefly but sabs were unable to get in as support continued to hassle. They then moved further south to another cover, this time speaking very loudly. Sabs gave chase but were likely too late as one hunter (not sure what his role is as the blazers change hunt staff so often) was dismounted in a wood clearly marked NO HUNTING. This is always a bad sign as it usually means hounds have marked and either terriers are going in or a kill has been made. He then proceeded to run our direction shouting "that's two today".

Hunt moved off east to a road and field completely flooded. They entered the field and sabs gave chase. After keeping in toe for a long period sabs heard a landowner in the distance shout for us to leave so we moved in the direction of the road. As we did so we accidentally knocked some stones from a wall and were rebuilding it when Anthony and four other riders came charging at us. We were kicked, punched, hit with hard end of whip on head multiple times. See video here:

After sabbing the Galway "blazers" for a few hours during their meet in Turloughmore assault hunt sabs

Unfortunately sabs had to immediately leave the area to seek medical aid for one sab who was hit with the blunt force object multiple times.

This is the true face of Irish hunting. When you stand up for wildlife, you are met with assault with a deadly weapon. Anthony and co, this is not the end of it.