On 23rd September 2026, Eggesford Hunt huntsman Jason Marles pleaded guilty at Exeter Magistrates’ Court in England to hunting a wild mammal with dogs at Pudson Farm, near Okehampton. He was fined £500 and ordered to pay £285 in costs as this is an offence under the Hunting Act 2004.
The conviction followed drone footage recorded by Devon County Hunt Saboteurs during the hunt’s Boxing Day meet in December 2025. It shows a fox being bolted from rubble and pursued by hounds. Saboteurs on a nearby farm track confirmed that the fox evaded capture.
In the footage, Marles stands beside the site where the fox had taken refuge, close to a cow barn, while two men with spades dig and move rubble. The saboteurs identified them as Eggesford terrier-man Tom Bounsall and landowner Lloyd Heard. After several minutes, the fox bolts for cover and the hounds follow, and the footage does not show any attempt to call them back. After Marles realised a drone was overhead, he and Heard swapped coats, presumably to interfere with any evidence gathering.
According to the Hunt Saboteur Association (HSA), Heard was charged with hunting offences relating to this incident and another near Crediton in February 2026, and as landowner he also faced a Section 3 Hunting Act charge, but the Crime Prosecution Service withdrew the proceedings, and no reason has been made public. Heard is the son-in-law of British Hound Sports Association Executive Director Julian Barnfield, a former Heythrop Hunt huntsman who pleaded guilty to four counts of unlawfully hunting foxes between 2011 and 2012.
HSA says that Marles was convicted in 2019 of threatening and abusive behaviour after a female saboteur was struck with his riding crop, suffering a bruised liver and needing airlifting to hospital, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. They also say that Bounsall, who also hunts with the Spooners & West Dartmoor Hunt, was convicted the same day of careless driving after reversing his quad into a female saboteur in November 2025.
A Hunt Saboteurs Association spokesperson said, “While we welcome these convictions, the sentences are pathetic … More than 20 years after the Hunting Act came into force, hunts are still chasing and killing foxes and hiding behind the trail-hunting smokescreen, while their powerful friends take to the media to urge the government to renege on their manifesto promise to ban it”
