Hunt saboteurs wade into pack of baying hounds and try to stop them killing a fox but can only retrieve its mauled body
- WARNING DISTRESSING CONTENT: Devon County Hunt Saboteurs film hunt
- One saboteur is bitten as she retrieves the dead fox from some 20 howling dogs
- They claim the nearby huntsman made no attempts to call off his hounds
This is the shocking moment a group of hunt saboteurs wade in to a huge pack of dogs to rescue the mauled body of a fox.
When the unrelenting hounds continue to bite the animal despite the screams and shouts of the Devon County Hunt Saboteurs, one woman pushes into the circle and retrieves the dead fox.
She is bitten on her hands and wrists as she wrenches the ‘still-twitching’ body from some 20 baying dogs.
The hunt saboteurs recorded the dramatic footage which they said they filmed at a farm outside Torrington, Devon, on Saturday afternoon.
One saboteur holds the dead fox after retrieving it from the pack of hounds. She was bitten on her wrists and hands as she tried to pluck the animal from the dogs
They posted: ‘The fox was disemboweled, bits of his face were ripped off and in the footage you can see hounds running around with bits of fur and flesh hanging out of their mouths.
‘The huntsman who was stood just metres away made no attempts to call hounds off at any point.’
The video begins with the saboteurs standing in a woodland area next to a few of the dogs.
A sudden barking is then heard from a hound in the next field and the dogs next to the saboteurs sprint through the bushes to head to it.
The hounds tear at the fox and the saboteurs claim that they saw them running around with bits of fur and flesh hanging out of their mouths
Some 20 unrelenting hounds continue to bite the animal despite the screams of the Devon County Hunt Saboteurs
The woman wearing the head-cam runs to the gate and jumps a wired fence into the field where the howling dogs are now huddled in a tightly-packed circle.
One of the saboteurs repeatedly roars at the pack to ‘leave it!’ while the barking dogs tug on the fox.
When a saboteur finally manages to pluck the now-dead animal from the group and cradles it in her arms, the dogs continue to bark and one even jumps up to try and snatch it back.
The team then yell at the foxhounds to ‘get out’ and then they begin to shout at the nearby hunter to ‘call them off’, which he eventually does.
After the dogs scarper, the visibly emotional saboteurs stand dumbfounded at what they have just witnessed, and one of them says ‘we did everything we could’.
MailOnline has approached the Countryside Alliance for comment.
Despite the best efforts of the saboteurs, the fox was killed and was disemboweled with bits of its face ripped off