YOU may call him crafty, intrepid and cunning, but you must also call him a political animal. One fox has escaped his last day of persecution by hiding behind Tony Blair’s house.

South Durham Hunt has been on his trail for five years. When they held their last meet on Wednesday at Sedgefield in the Prime Minister’s northeast constituency — their last before the hunting ban becomes law today — he gave them the slip again.

Eighty horses and 35 hounds pursued him for 15 miles across fields, streams and through a hay barn until he went to ground in a patch of allotments next to the Blairs’ constituency home and office in the village of Trimdon Colliery.

In a final gesture of sportsmanship, the huntsmen called off the chase. Mark Shotton, 60, Master of the South Durham Hunt, said yesterday: “Fair play to him; he won the day. Once a fox goes to earth we let them be.” But the animal, named ‘Tony’s fox’ by his pursuers, gave the hunt a fair run for their money. “He ran us all the way from Trimdon out to Teesside,“ Mr Shotton said.

“At one point we saw him stand on a hill and watch which way the hounds were going. He then headed in the opposite direction. We kept losing the scent and had trailed across country all the way to the Samsung factory eight miles away before he started to head back towards his den.”

When the hunt caught up with him at a hay barn he hid between the bales, and terriers were sent in to flush him out. But he escaped again.

Hunt members were yesterday more forgiving of the fox than they were of their local MP, who bought the former colliery manager’s house when he was elected 20 years ago. “You can never really catch a good fox,” Shirley Bowes, secretary of the 133-year-old hunt, said, referring to the animal and not the politician.

“When Tony Blair was elected in 1997 there was a feeling in Sedgefield that he was one of our own, and he brought so much hope. Instead, he and his Government have wrecked our way of life.”

In other parts of the country yesterday, huntsmen indulged in their last pursuit of live foxes, determined that the sport would live on. There was palpable anger among members of the Avon Vale as the hunt set off from Calne, Wiltshire, on a drizzly morning.

Fifty riders and as many on foot had gathered for an emotional farewell to what for many of them is as much a way of life as a sport. John Bartholomew, owner of the Wadworth brewery in Devizes and a former major in the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry, is in his 75th season with the Avon Vale, with only the Second World War as an interruption. “I was a prisoner in Germany for three years; what kept me going was the thought of resuming hunting when I got back to England. This ban is an example of the tyranny we fought to end.” He recalled that Hitler had banned hunting in Germany in the 1930s.

Malcolm Scobie, an Avon Vale’s huntsman, still wears the same red hunting coat that he first donned in 1989. He faces the loss of his job, his home and his hounds unless a way can be found for the hunt to continue.

For the time being he and his colleagues intend to abide by the law while waiting for a change of government to repeal the legislation. His immediate task, however, is to teach his hounds to follow a scent laid by a man rather than a beast; otherwise they face extinction.

“Some of the hounds will do it and others won’t. They aren’t stupid animals; they know the difference between a live fox and a sock stuffed full of fox shit.”

Mr Scobie, 41, said that the original reaction of threats to defy the law and carry on regardless had been replaced by a grim determination simply to survive. Tomorrow, the Avon Vale will meet at Monk’s Park, Gastard, but instead of a fox they will chase a trail laid by a member of the hunt staff. No one knows where it will end.

LAST TALLY-HO

• The last legal hunts attracted 105,000 people to meets in England and Wales
• Older participants were distraught that they had lost the battle to save the sport. Some doubt they will survive to see the ban repealed
• Anyone caught chasing and killing a fox, deer, mink or hare with hounds now faces a £5,000 fine

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