Hounds E-Book

David Hancock

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 441

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Hounds is a book for all those who admire the most endearing of sporting dogs, the scenthounds, the enthusiastic canine companions of the sportsmen who are thrilled by seeing a pack of hounds in full cry - watching these exceptional canine athletes exercising their delight in pursuing scent, whether real or artificial. Painstakingly researched and packed with information, this book covers both the well-known recognized breeds and the more obscure ones from overseas, some quite unknown to the British public.

Leseprobe

HOUNDS

HUNTING BY SCENT

HOUNDS

HUNTING BY SCENT

David Hancock

Previous Books by the AuthorDogs As Companions – 1981Old Working Dogs – 1984 (reprinted 1998 and 2011)The Heritage of the Dog – 1990The Bullmastiff: A Breeder’s Guide Vol 1 – 1996The Bullmastiff: A Breeder’s Guide Vol 2 – 1997Old Farm Dogs – 1999The Mastiffs: The Big Game Hunters – 2000–06 (six editions)The Bullmastiff: A Breeder’s Guide – 2006 (one volume hardback edition)The World of the Lurcher – 2010Sporting Terriers: Their Form, Their Function and Their Future – 2011Sighthounds: Their Form, Their Function and Their Future – 2012Gundogs – Their Past, Their Performance and Their Prospects – 2013

First published in 2014 byThe Crowood Press LtdRamsbury, MarlboroughWiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2014

© David Hancock 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 602 4

Page 1: Late 18th-century hunting scene – Sporting Magazine frontispiece.Page 2: Types of modern hound from Hounds and Hunting through the Ages by Joseph B.Thomas MFH, 1928.Page 3: German scent hound.Page 5: The Hunts of Maximilian, 1520.

CONTENTS

Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgements and Author’s Note

Introduction: Hounds and the Hunting Habit

Chapter 1: The Scenthound Provenance

Chapter 2: The Specialists

Chapter 3: Hounds Abroad

Chapter 4: The Future

Conclusion: Conserving our Hounds

The Anatomy of the Hound

Glossary of Terms

Bibliography

Index

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the seekers of excellence in our native hound breeds, and, in the packs, to devoted huntsmen like Will Goodall and Joe Bowman and influential Masters such as Sir Edward Curre and Sir Ian Heathcoat-Amory, whose devotion and commitment has allowed us to enjoy and admire the remarkably gifted and distinctive breeds of hounds that hunt by scent in so many different countries around the world. We owe them an immense debt of gratitude for their inspired work over several centuries. May we honour their memory by producing hounds that they themselves would have been proud of; these remarkable dogs are under unprecedented threat in an increasingly urban world. We need to meet that threat by breeding high-quality hounds – perhaps for different purposes than past sportsmen had ever intended but providing a spiritual outlet for the outstanding hounds they bequeathed to us. In conserving such superb canine athletes we pay respect to our sporting forefathers and their immense achievement in developing them for our enjoyment today.

Valued Hunt Servants: Anthony Chapman (Windermere Harriers) and Joe Bowman (Ullswater Foxhounds). (Photo: Richard Chapman 1932).

Sir Ian Heathcoat Amory with the Tiverton Hounds (Lionel Edwards, 1929).

Will Goodall of the Pytchley, with the Earl and Countess Spencer (John Charlton. 1930).

Sir William Curre with his famous hounds (Lionel Edwards, 1929).

PREFACE

Who is not stirred by the sheer dash, unrestrained joy and committed enthusiasm of a pack of hounds in full cry! It’s part of our sporting heritage; it’s in our blood as well as theirs. This book is a celebration of the scenthound, whether British, French, American or a lesser-known breed from the Baltic or the Balkans. These remarkably talented hounds were specifically bred over many centuries to have quite remarkable scenting power, often at some speed. We need to respect their heritage and breed them in a way that is honest towards their past and not in pursuit of some contemporary whim. This means being faithful to their breed history and not ignoring it out of modern haste and arrogance. If we are not aware of how they came into being, exactly what they were designed for and precisely how they functioned in the field, how can we breed them true?

Those who use dogs – sportsmen, hunters, shepherds and ranchers – demand dogs with a capability. The hunting world both here and overseas has long sought field excellence ahead of any cosmetic value or respect for registries. The maintenance of a studbook has for them been important as a breeding record, not the dogmatic insistence on a closed genepool, come what may. Writing in Hounds magazine in 2004, Charles Fielding, an acknowledged expert on hound breeding, used these words: ‘Fortunately hounds are bred from in the winter when their working abilities are foremost in the mind, but woe betide anyone who tries to breed for looks alone.’ It is hard to imagine any breed registered with the Kennel Club (KC) following such a philosophy. Breed purity and cosmetic appeal has in so many breeds held sway over soundness, health, historic type and ability to fulfil the breed’s original purpose, aspects covered here. This book is not a manual covering breeding, nutrition, care and maintenance, but an examination of the origin of the hound breeds, their function as sporting dogs, their current flaws and their future in an increasingly non-sporting world.

The Chase by Walter Hunt, 1912.

Generally speaking, in the world of dogs, kennel clubs keep the breeds going and sportsmen keep the functions alive. Our KC does stage field trials, working tests, agility and obedience events but it’s sportsmen who use hounds, gundogs and terriers as sporting assistants. They rely on the KC to bring structure and discipline to the breeding and trialling of dogs. But some canine body really should sort out nomenclature and Group allocation in breeds of dog, as this affects not just the quality of Group judging knowledge in the show ring but also their future design. The Dachshund, for example, is recognized by our KC as a hound, perhaps because the word ‘hund’ was interpreted as hound, whereas it actually means dog. The Dachshund is no ‘running dog’, very much an earth-dog, and is not covered by this book. The Dachs-bracke, the German badger-hound, is included.

This is the Dachsbracke – the German Badger Hound.

German hunter with his Schweisshund, 1890.

In the medieval hunt, terms used then were also loosely applied, with perhaps the best explanation being in the Appendix to the Baillie-Grohman’s editing of The Master of Game, the Duke of York’s translation of Gaston de Foix’s Livre de Chasse of 1387. Hunting mastiffs were alauntes; brachets or bercelets were hunting dogs that accompanied those who shot their furred game (rather like the Bavarian Mountain Hounds of today, with their valued tracking skills) but could also mean small bitch hounds; lymers or limiers were leashed scenthounds, used rather as ‘tufters’ are used in the Staghound packs; raches were the smaller, mainly white packhounds but could also refer to bitch hounds; bandogges were the ferocious ‘seizers’, slipped at the kill, to save the more valued running hounds; greyhounds were the Grehounds or levriers, not the modern breed of Greyhound, with the fierce and shaggy Irish and Scottish Deerhounds called the ‘levrier d’attache’ or ‘held-dog’ and the smaller, smooth-coated hound, the ‘petit levrier pour lievre’ or small harehound. A brace, or more usually a brace and a half, was held by a fewterer. Heyrers were the tricolour Harriers of today; gazehounds, not used in couples, were used in packs ‘at force’.

Wild Boar Hunt by R.J. Savery (1576–1639); bandogge on left.

Young man with his Zwicdarm or strong-headed sighthound/par force hound: A. Moro’s Le Nain du Cardinal Granville.

The word ‘forest’ once referred to any area of ground used for hunting, not a sizeable wood. The word ‘deer’ was used to denote any animal, hence the German word ‘tier’ for animal. Researchers using medieval sources need to be aware of such past meanings. In his exhaustive Lexicon of the Medieval German Hunt (1965), David Dalby lists the various terms for hunting dogs used then. The word wint was used to denote both the purpose-bred Greyhound and the heavier veltre or zwic-darm, which was a blend of hound – Mastiff and Greyhound – resembling the bull lurchers of today.

The German boarhound or Great Dane (known there as the Deutsche Dogge or German Mastiff – the Danish Mastiff is the Broholmer) will always be a hound, despite its Group allocation by kennel clubs. The Dalmatian may well be the medieval ‘dama-chien’ or deer-dog and a genuine hound (see later section on Staghounds). The Mastiff was once prized as a heavy hound – the famed Englische Dogge. The ancestors of the Bulldog were also used in the hunting field – the ‘bullenbeissers’ of central Europe. But then the Hound Group has long been basically ill-composed; there were always four types of hound, never just scenthounds and sighthounds. As discussed later, a more accurate composition would be a four-way split identifying: hounds that hunt by speed (sighthounds), those that hunt by stamina (scenthounds), those that hunt ‘at force’ (par force hounds, like the Great Dane and the Rhodesian Ridgeback) and the heavy hounds, including the holding dogs, perpetuated today by some of the mastiff breeds. The international kennel club, the Federation Cynologique Internationale (FCI), now acknowledges ‘dogues’, dogges or mastiffs, separately from ‘molossers’. The molossian dog is well recorded by the ancient Greeks, who described two forms: the huge shepherd’s dog or flock guardian, usually white, and a giant hound.

Seventeenth-century hunting scene – The Hunting Party by Jan Fyt (1609–61).

Fourth-century votive relief, Crannon, Greece; Molossian Dog depicted on right.

In a later chapter, I devote space to the evolution of both the Rhodesian Ridgeback and the Dogo Argentino, two breeds created, unusually, in recorded history and therefore authentically exemplifying the way breed design was shaped by function. Does it really matter, getting a breed’s history or its original function wrong? I believe it does and that a verified provenance can have value for the dogs of today. The breeds of hounds that hunt by scent, using stamina to run down their quarry, have served man for over ten millennia, filling his pot, providing sport and supporting man, in what he has always been, a hunter. We must now keep faith, both with our ancestors, who left these superb canine athletes in our care, and with our hounds, by breeding them to function, not just for cosmetic appeal. This book is a plea for just that.

The illustrations in this book, apart from exemplifying the text, tell a story too; as Aubrey Noakes wrote in his Sportsmen in a Landscape:

The English aristocracy and landed gentry from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century enjoyed great privileges and wealth, yet most of them preferred country life and sport to a town existence. This preference is reflected in the pictures they commissioned. Thus English sporting pictures are not only to be cherished as memorials of old sporting occasions, but should be regarded as useful guides to an understanding of our social past.

The Lost Hounds, depicted in 1810.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author is grateful to the staff at Sotheby’s Picture Library, Christie’s Images Ltd., Bonhams, Arthur Ackermann Ltd, David Messum Galleries, Richard Green & Co., Rountree Fine Art, The Bridgeman Art Library, The Nature Picture Library, The National Art Library, The Wallace Collection, R Cox & Co., Lane Fine Art, The Kennel Club, The American Kennel Club, The National Trust, The Royal Collection – Photographic Services and private collectors, (especially the late Mevr AH (Ploon) de Raad of Zijderveld, Holland, who gave free use of her extensive photographic archive of sporting paintings), for their gracious and generous permissions to reproduce some of the illustrations used in this book.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

A number of the illustrations in this book lack pictorial quality but are included because uniquely they either contribute historically to or best exemplify the meaning of the text. Old depictions do not always lend themselves to reproduction in today’s higher quality print and publishing format. Those that are included have significance beyond their graphic limitations and I ask for the reader’s understanding over this.

Where quotes are used, they are used verbatim, despite any vagaries in spelling, irregular use of capital letters or departures from contemporary grammar. For me, it is important that their exact form, as presented by the author originally, is displayed, as this can help to capture the mood of those times.

Return from the hunt: German nobleman with tracking hound, 1874.

German hunter with tracking hound c.1890.

INTRODUCTION

HOUNDS AND THE HUNTING HABIT

A vast collection of hound lore has accumulated over the centuries, some authentic and much legendary and false, but it is true to say that few animals have given so much sport and pleasure to men and women as the branch of the canine world known as hounds…Hounds are a familiar sight in the English countryside and there are few people, countryman or townsman alike, whose hearts do not beat faster when they hear the cry and see a fast hunting pack streaming over plough and field on a good scenting day… For centuries, hounds have been stitched into the tapestry of British sporting history…

C.G.E. Wimhurst, The Book of the Hound (1964)

Anyone contemplating the writing of a book entitled Hounds of the World has a job on their hands if the title is truly to reflect the text. Wherever man existed he utilized hunting dogs; the immense spread of hound breeds in the inhabited world and the sheer multiplicity of local types indicates their value to man. We in Britain are rightly proud of our packhound breeds and very aware of the merit of the French breeds. But we have long been almost dismissive of the lesser-known scenthounds from more distant smaller countries or remote areas of bigger countries. The recognition of breeds is a haphazard matter in any country; our Foxhound has more varieties than the Belgian Shepherd Dog or the Dachshund, without earning a name for each of them. Our Harrier too has its Studbook and West Country varieties. In France, where they even named their crossbred hounds as distinct breeds – like the Anglo-Poitevin or the Anglo-Gascon-Saintongeois, the Foxhound crosses with native hounds – this would have soon been resolved. In the Balkans and Eastern Europe they are only just recognizing some of their native hound breeds – realizing the importance of their sporting heritage – and this is covered in Chapter 3.

In Hot Pursuit, Foxhunting, 1890.

Three French hounds: (from left to right) Anglo-Poitevin, Saintongeois; Chien Courant de l’Ariege; and Race de Virelade.

A Group of Gascon-Saintongeois cross Foxhound hybrids.

Varying Recognition

Here, our KC recognizes fewer than twenty different breeds in its Hound Group that are not sighthounds, choosing to exclude our own Harrier (which it once recognized) and the German Boarhound or Great Dane (whose omission is covered in a later chapter), but including six breeds of Dachshund, whose principal function was that of an earth dog or terrier, and is therefore not covered in this book (but covered in depth in my Sporting Terriers, Crowood, 2011). The FCI recognizes nearly fifty in its Group 6 (Scenthounds), including our Harrier, but not the Dachshund, or the Basenji (as we do in our Hound Group), and puts the Spitz hounds into a Nordic Type section. The FCI does, however, rightly in my view, consider the Dalmatian to be a hound. They recognize the Bloodhound as the Saint Hubert Hound. We put the Dalmatian (and two Japanese hunting dogs, the Akita and the Shiba Inu) into the Utility Group. This mismatch causes problems for judges, whose expertise may not embrace the breeds they encounter abroad. It is not exactly helpful either for breeders of Great Danes and Dalmatians: should their dogs be hound-like or indeed be designed for any one single hunting field function?

Dachsbracke (on left) and Schweisshund in late nineteenth-century German stag hunt.

Imprecise Division

I argue on succeeding pages that the division of hounds into two categories: scent and sighthounds, is too arbitrary. All hounds hunt by sight and scent; the scenthounds succeed in the hunt because of their stamina, the sighthounds because of their speed. But where do the ‘par force’ hounds fit into this? They hunted, and in some countries still do, ‘at force’ using scent and sight, being represented today by breeds like the Great Dane, the Rhodesian Ridgeback, the Dogo Argentino (all of which are later covered in more detail, because their evolution was recorded) and the Black Mouth Cur. And what about the hunting mastiffs used to close with big game and then ‘hold’ it, represented today by the mastiff breeds? They were the heavy hounds but languish in the KC’s Working Group. They are covered by this book, however, and their role explained.

Rhodesian Ridgeback displaying its distinctive ridge.

Dalmatian greets Great Dane – two lost hound breeds (photo: David Lindsey).

Black Mouth Cur – famous treeing breed.

The national kennel clubs of the world are guilty of neglecting the rich heritage behind their native breeds of dog. It may be timely for the Masters of packhounds to do more to educate the public at large about Britain’s scenthound heritage and spread the word beyond hunt followers. This book is intended to stimulate a wider interest in the world of the scenthound. It is a much wider world than our show rings and hound shows indicate. The scenthounds of the world are remarkable animals; their heritage is one to be celebrated.

Hunting Style

Function and therefore type in hounds is directly related to hunting styles. In his mighty tome An Encyclopaedia of Rural Sports of 1870, Delabere Blaine summed up hunting in Britain down the ages:

The records of the British chase, previous to the Roman invasion are few and uncertain… The invasion of the Romans did not probably restrict the venatorial pursuits of the Britons… The Saxons, in common with all the northern intruders, were much more attached to hunting than the Romans… Early in the fourteenth century hunting was becoming an organized as well as a popular pursuit…the fox also became an object of the sportsman’s search in the succeeding centuries… Of hunting generally it may be remarked, that it became truly an organized pursuit during the last century only, since which time considerable alterations have occurred in the practice of it. Indeed, the opinions and habits of the sportsmen themselves, the horses they ride, and the dogs they employ, have all been for some years past undergoing a gradual change.

If one word had to be chosen to typify the hunting habit in Britain it would have to be ‘change’, constant change. This has meant the hounds adapting too.

In his book Monarchy and the Chase of 1944, ‘Sabretache’ wrote:

All these Norman kings, whatever their misdeeds in other regions, were unquestionably imbued with a genuine love of hunting, the conqueror being both knowledgeable, and, at the same time, the best veneur, and, likewise, the man who did a very great deal to improve the breed of the indigenous horse. He knew what to do and he did it. Though the Conqueror did not initiate hunting in England, to his credit it must be recorded that he added a few weighty stones to the foundations laid by the Saxons.

What disparate influences: ancient British, Roman, Saxon, Norman styles, and each of them affected by social attitudes as well. Hunting styles change and with them the hounds change as well; the quarry of course played a key part in their development too.

Noble Patronage

If any huntsman had been bold enough to suggest to William the Conqueror that stag hunting was on the way out and that the noble staghound would be forced to give way to a hound bred to hunt the fox, it is possible he would have been executed on the spot… And it would have sounded like nonsense because, in 1066, and for many centuries afterwards, the fox was vermin and every effort was made to stamp out the species. They were driven into nets, clubbed to death, trapped, and any method was considered good provided it ended in the death of a fox. The stag and the hare reigned supreme although, it must be admitted, it was the practice of many hunts to chase anything that turned up.

C.G.E. Wimhurst, The Book of the Hound (1964)

The eighteenth century was the golden age of field sports in Britain. Shooting over pointers, which were also expected to retrieve the game shot, hunting with the new breeds of foxhounds, coursing, or hare or otter hunting were the regular sports of the countryside… Buck hunting was also growing less common and red deer, as noted, was only extensively hunted in the West Country.

Michael Brander, Hunting and Shooting (1971)

These two quotes summarize very neatly the way in which hunting habits – and therefore the hounds in support, can change century by century, and, as the twenty-first century is already indicating, external pressures on hunting can have highly significant, but hopefully not permanent, effects. In Victorian times, the nobility and landed gentry had a huge influence on dogs, sporting breeds especially. In his Monarchy and the Chase of 1944, ‘Sabretache’ wrote:

If Victoria the Good had been a hunting lady, she would have at once realized the fact that when she came to the throne her country was little short of a hunting paradise. Hounds had improved out of all knowledge; the well-bred hunter was in similar profusion…

There were 200 packs of Foxhounds, with the Duke of Beaufort, Earl Bathurst, the Earls of Lonsdale, of Derby and of Darlington, Viscount Portman and Lords Donerail, Portsmouth, Fitzhardinge, Coventry and Bentinck taking a keen interest. Lord Bagot showed Bloodhounds and Lord Wolverton ran a pack of them in Dorset, later sold to Lord Carrington in Buckinghamshire. The Marquis of Anglesea kept Harriers and Sir John Heathcote-Amory favoured Staghounds. The Duke of Atholl maintained a pack of Otterhounds, as did the Marquis of Conyngham in Ireland.

The Beaufort Hounds by Alfred Wheeler (1851–1932).

Two 1905 Peterborough champion Foxhounds: Earl Bathurst’s Damsel and Harper of the Fitzwilliam.

The Portman Kennels by Lionel Edwards, 1933.

The Earl of Lonsdale in Kennels.

The Marquis of Conyngham’s Otterhounds, 1936.

The Earl of Darlington’s Kennels by Henry Chalon, 1813.

But this was a time of social change, with newly wealthy sportsmen entering the hunting field as well as the country sports world more generally. Many were livestock breeders too.

Enlightened Breeding

The early years of the twentieth century saw the West Country continuing to favour its Staghounds and Harriers, the Basset Hound becoming the choice of some hare-hunters and significant changes in Foxhound breeding; the importance of an infusion of Welsh Hound and Fell Hound blood into many packs, as well as the value of the Belvoir stallion hounds, was recognized. More importantly, the emphasis on drive, nose, cry and pace led to the development of more athletic, lighter, less-boney hounds.

The main instigator of this was Sir Edward Curre at the Chepstow Hunt. By the end of the Great War he had already had some twenty years of combining the merits of top quality English bitches with proven Welsh stallion hounds, usually in a white or light jacket. He inspired others like Sir Ian Amory of the Tiverton and Isaac Bell of the South and West Wilts and influenced the Heythrop, North Cotswold and Cattistock packs. Out went the massively timbered so-called ‘bovines’ and less favoured were the classic tricoloured Belvoir markings. By the 1930s, the ‘Peterborough type’ had been superseded by the lighter-boned, pacier hounds with better stamina. The importance of the ‘female line’ in breeding was recognized, overcoming the slavish adherence to the ‘sire-dominated’ thinking of the previous century. The Harrier packs maintained their more balanced approach to hound breeding.

The Pride of the Belvoir by John Emms, 1841–1912.

Fell-type bitch in the Ullswater, 1932.

Welsh Hounds by Arthur Wardle, 1897.

Riding to or Hunting with

It could be said that after the First World War, hunting the fox with hounds moved on to become riding to hounds. The distinguished American Master of Foxhounds (MFH), Joseph B. Thomas, describes this well in his important book, Hounds and Hunting Through the Ages, published in New York in 1937:

The Curre white hounds by T. Ivester Lloyd, 1937.

In Britain hunting to ride is now all the vogue as opposed to riding to hunt: quick bursts lifting hounds to holloas and over numerous foxes have played havoc with veritable hunting in the old sense… The deliberately dishonest huntsman is inexcusable, he ruins hounds and he deceives his followers. Cheering hounds to a false line, laying drags, dropping foxes at the end of a drag line, making his field believe hounds are hunting a fox when they are in reality hunting the huntsman, expressed mildly some of his whiles… In England, where a huntsman’s tips depend largely on his reputation as a ‘smart’ huntsman giving the riding contingent many short quick gallops, it is also a great temptation for a huntsman to be euphemistically speaking a faker.

These are strong words, but need noting. For me the ‘thrill’ of the chase lies in watching hounds at work, not horses jumping, much as I enjoy steeplechases and point to points. The joy of seeing supremely fit, strongly motivated hounds surely lifts the spirits of every dog-lover.

Persistent Faults

A hound show like those at Peterborough, Harrogate, Ardingly, Rydal, Honiton or Builth Wells should be a joy to visit if you admire fit dogs, dogs in tip-top condition. At a number of recent hound shows I have been disappointed to see some of the long acknowledged scenthound flaws creeping back in: fleshy feet, bunched toes, toeing-in, over-boning at the knee and forelegs arrow-straight when viewed from the side, allowing no ‘give’ in the pasterns. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Foxhound fraternity lost its collective head, prizing massive bone, knuckling over at the knee, bunched toes and toeing-in, during what the well-known hound writer Daphne Moore, in her Foxhounds of 1981, referred to as the ‘shorthorn’ era. If experienced huntsmen can lose their way so catastrophically, it is hardly surprising if breeders of breeds recognized by the KC – who do not ‘work’ their animals – get lost sometimes. The draught-dog bone strangely desired in the Mastiff, the muzzle-less Bulldog and the long list of terrier breeds with upright shoulders, despite the wording of their breed standard, exemplify how breeders and fanciers, and clearly not just show ones, can lose their way. Dogs, hounds especially, are functional creatures, subject to our whims. If those possessing those whims lose sight of function then a dark shadow looms over a breed.

Puckeridge Foxhounds Colonist and Cardinal, 1902 by G. Paice.

At KC-licensed shows, the lack of fitness amongst most of the exhibits is a cause of concern. Judges, in their critiques, mention poor movement in breed after breed; a fit dog will always move better than an unfit one. Old-timers knew this and resorted to roadwork, not just to tighten up the feet but to improve movement. Packhounds at hound shows are always supremely fit and it is such a source of pleasure to see such animals on the move: effortless power, utter harmony, perfect balance, rippling muscles, coats with a real bloom. The condition and physical soundness of the hounds of the pack are timely reminders to all hound owners that their dogs need to be regarded as canine athletes not ornamental possessions, deprived of exercise, of spiritual nutriment and of ‘instinctoutlets’; hounds need to be indulged but not spoiled, their latent longings respected. Hunting may be at the mercy of contemporary thinking, but the needs of the hounds are eternal. Hunting, as a sport, may have become contentious; the fundamental needs of the hounds may require redirecting, but their skills are precious and really have to be conserved.

Misplaced Compassion

After the all-time high of hunting in the 1930s, the Second World War, as had the First, devastated the hunting field, the packs especially. The requirement for maximum food production, extensive afforestation and wide-reaching social change altered not just the hunting country but public attitudes to the sport. Significantly, the leading animal charity, the RSPCA, despite having been founded by the keen foxhunter Richard Martin, mounted a much more militant opposition to all hunting with dogs. The anti-hunting pressure-group, the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS), managed to capture the new generation of young activists, as well as considerable funding. The defection from LACS of three leaders: Richard Course, Jim Barrington and Graham Sirl, when they realized that a hunting ban would not prevent the death or suffering of foxes and might well increase suffering and death rates, has been strangely overlooked by both loud-voiced politicians and the lazier mainstream media outlets.

Judging at the Peterborough Show, 1890.

In contemporary Britain, consensual moral vanity has invaded the sphere of individual conscience and instigated major change, certainly creating changes in hunting habits, and not entirely to the benefit of the quarry. Nowadays the word hunting has come to mean foxhunting, which in itself has wider-ranging perils. The mean-spirited Hunting Act of 2004 was aimed at ‘men in pink’ and admitted to be, by more honest politicians, an act of class warfare rather than an animal welfare move. How many of them know of the fifty-year-old Banwen Miners Hunt? The fact that this Act has achieved what Danish kings, Norman knights and urban-dwelling wealthy reformists failed to do over a whole millennium – the denial of a working man his freedom to hunt – seems to have escaped contemporary socialist thinking. There is rich irony in the fact that communist gurus such as Lenin and Engels were keen hunters, the latter riding to hounds with the Cheshire hunt. If animals have ‘rights’, do hounds not have a ‘right’ to hunt naturally?

Hare hounds fail to spot the hare, 1897.

There is sadness in seeing foxes, maimed by an inaccurate shot, struggling to survive in remoter country areas; if foxes have to be controlled then surely the most humane method of dispatching them should be pursued. The bare fact that this is best achieved by the lead Foxhound and not a riskier shotgun blast seems to have little appeal for today’s welfarists. Personal prejudice should never override honest humanity. Foxhunting is casually described as a country sport, but at its very least, it is in reality a form of humane enlightened pest control that has both shaped our countryside and created a rural pastime that enjoys a dedicated following. Hareshoots can be like a slaughterhouse; hare-hunting allows escape. Even those with hostile views on hunting can wax lyrical about a pack of hounds simply flowing over the countryside. Hunting has long been best regulated by those who respect their quarry and have an interest in their perpetuation. For a thousand years hounds were considered the best tool to control recognized quarry; they still are! This book campaigns for hounds, whether here or abroad, in packs or in domestic kennels, to be used!

Counting the bag after a hare shoot, 1947.

One of the best features of hunting is that it gives all classes a chance of meeting on terms of equality. In the hunting field all men are equal with the exception of the master and the huntsman – they should be absolute autocrats. The peer must take a back seat if the butcher with a bold heart can pound him over a big fence.

Otho Paget, Hunting (1900)

It is very important that foxhounds catch enough foxes to justify their existence. Farmers and shooting people expect it and it is up to the hunt to keep the balance of the right number for their country, otherwise every ‘Tom, Dick or Harry’ starts having a go, often with cruel results. In a hill country it is essential to catch every fox possible, leaving only the minimum for the continuance of the species. Harehounds have no such duty and a large tally is meaningless.

‘Hareless’, writing in Hounds magazine (December 1989)

Critics say that hunting cannot possibly be a form of pest control as they kill so few compared with other methods. This is to fundamentally misunderstand hunting and wildlife management. Wildlife management is not about numbers killed, but the health and size of the population left alive. A hunt is perfectly suited to achieving this, being a combination of sport, wildlife management and pest control and not just any one of those things.

Jim Barrington, Countryside Alliance animal welfare consultant, writing on political website www.politics.co.uk (January 2013)

CHAPTER 1

THE SCENTHOUND PROVENANCE

It is easy to visualize the gradual domestication of the dog. It is likely that the forerunners of the modern hunting dog were slinking, furtive creatures, allies in hunting, like the jackal following the lion pack, for what they might gain as a result. While hanging about the cave mouth ready to seize any scrap of meat or bones available, they would also give warning of any intruder. Gradually, as man established his ascendancy, so the dog became at least semi-domesticated. As the young of each played and tumbled together in the dust outside the cave, so that essential bond between hunter and hunting dog was formed.

Michael Brander, Hunting and Shooting (1971)

Origins and Ancestry

I believe that in the domestication of the dog, the hounds came first, not of course looking like contemporary breeds of hound in conformation, but first in functional use for man. The seventeenth-century French naturalist, Buffon, I know, for one, argued that the sheepdogs came before them but I can find no logic in that. To use sheepdogs primitive man had first to become a farmer of sorts yet man was a hunter-gatherer long, long before he became a farmer, although I acknowledge that in some places sheep were domesticated before dogs. The sheepdog’s instinct for rounding up numbers of sheep or singling one out for attention almost certainly developed from the hunting style of primitive wild dog and is still practised in the wild today.

A White Hound by Antonio dei Fedeli, c.1492–4.

Before man kept animals of his own, he needed to fill his pot with the meat of wild animals and what better ally than a tamed wild dog acting as a hound. Such a canine ally could assist man to locate game in the first place, be used to drive the game towards precipices, pits or human hunters with their primitive weapons, such as spears. Subsequently these domesticated dogs were to be trained to drive selected game into specially constructed enclosures or into cleverly positioned nets. In due course very fast game was hunted using very fast dogs, big game was hunted with big dogs or hunting mastiffs and feathered game hunted using dogs that could either silently (like a setter) or noisily (like a bark-pointer) indicate the location of the quarry. In time the tracking dogs became specialist hounds, able to hunt boar or hare, wild asses or deer, bison or elk. In Europe, the names of the early breeds in the hunting field indicate their function: Bufalbeisser (buffalo-biter), Bärenbeisser (bear-biter) and Bullenbeisser (wild bull-biter).

Strongly made Hound, Graeco-Egyptian bronze, third century BC.

The Boar Hunt by Johann Ridinger, 1729. The ‘seizers’ rush to the boar.

The Danzig ‘bear-biter’ or holding dog used on bear.

The Netherlands bull-biter or Dutch holding dog, used as a ‘pinner’ of bulls.

Stag hunting using nets and hounds by Johann Ridinger, 1729.

The Ancient World

Much is made by breed historians of the hounds of Egypt, Greece and Rome, and certainly the Celts, the Greeks and the Romans greatly prized their hunting dogs and left descriptions of them. Hounds were extremely valuable as pot-fillers and were therefore extensively traded, but there is ample evidence of hound-like dogs long before these times. In the mesolithic period, 9,000 years ago, one or two species of larger animal provided the main source of meat in the human diet. In Europe these were red deer and wild boar, in north America the bison and in western Asia the gazelle and wild goat. One survey (Jarman, 1972) carried out in 165 sites of late palaeolithic and mesolithic age throughout Europe revealed the meat sources of the hunter-gatherers: 95 per cent of the sites indicated the presence of red deer, 60 per cent showed roe deer, 10 per cent revealed elk and chamois and a few had bison and reindeer, and 20 per cent of the sites indicated the presence of dog. One of the earliest records of dog remains comes from the palaeolithic cave of Palegawra in what is now Iraq, some 12,000 years old. Canid remains found at Vlasac in Romania date from c.5400–4600BC and the other remains there indicate no other domesticated animals.

Running mastiff depicted in Roman artefact from first–third century AD.

Well before 2000BC there were huge hefty hunting dogs throughout western Asia and a variety of hunting dogs in ancient Egypt, their white antelope dog resembling our modern harriers in conformation. The Sage Kings of the Yellow River valley in China, the Dravidians of the Indus valley in India and the Sumerians in the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates were, especially by European standards of that time, sophisticated hunters. Discoveries from near Ergani in Turkey dated from 9500BC and from east Idaho in the United States dated from 9500–9000BC prove the existence of tracking dogs in cave settlements. Ivory carvings from Thebes, dating from 4400–4000BC, depict fast running hounds. The Phoenicians had hounds hunting both by speed and by stamina using scent. In Babylon powerful short-faced hounds were used to hunt wild asses and lions. The Assyrian kings, assisted by their keepers of hounds, hunted lions, wild bull and elephant. From 2500BC onwards hunting with hounds was a favourite entertainment for noblemen in the Nile delta.

One scribe of the 19th Dynasty described a pack of hounds, 200 of one type, 400 of another, stating that ‘The red-tailed dog goes at night into the stalls of the hills. He is better than the long-faced dog, and he makes no delay in hunting…’ In the Rig-Veda, an ancient Sanskrit record of Hindu mythology, we can find hound-like dogs described as ‘broad of nostril and insatiable…’ In time the specialist hounds developed physically to suit their function, the ‘long-faced’ dogs needing a slashing capability in their jaws backed by excellent longsighted vision. The ‘broad-nostrilled’, wider-skulled, looser-lipped dogs needed plenty of room for scenting capacity in both nose and lips where scent was tasted. As hounds became linked with human preferences in method of hunting and choice of quarry, so the breeds developed. Flavius Arrianus (Arrian), in the second century AD, described two Celtic breeds: the Segusiae (named after a tribe from a province which included what is now Lyons) with excellent noses, good cry but a tendency to dwell on the scent; and the Vertragi (literally ‘lots of foot’), rough-haired, greyhound-like dogs.

Assyrian Hunting Dog in painted clay, found at Kultepe.

Prototypal Hounds

Claims have been made for the Segusiae being the prototype of our modern scenthounds – Bloodhounds, Foxhounds, Bassets and Harriers. But Arrian found nothing remarkable or noteworthy about them, merely explaining that they hunted in the same way as Cretan and Carian hounds. Xenophon records seeing hounds in Asia Minor. I suspect that the Greeks and Romans found the Celtic greyhound not a new breed but a variety of one of the oldest types in existence. In time the Greeks became aware of the hounds from the Rhineland called Sycambrians, the Pannonian hounds from what is now northern Yugoslavia and the Sarmatian hounds from southern Russia. From the north of the Himalayas came a ferocious breed of hounds known as Seres after the people of that name. From further south came the red-brindle ‘Indian’ hounds, recommended by Xenophon for hunting deer and wild boar. From Persia in the first century BC came the Elymaean hounds (more precisely from the Gulf area), the fierce Carmanians, the savage mastiff-like Hyrcaneans (from the area where Tehran now is and probably more like today’s broad-mouthed breeds than any Molossian) and the fighting hounds, the Medians. In Asia Minor were the Carians (from the area where the hound-like Anatolian shepherd dogs of today come from), esteemed by Arrian as tracking hounds, with good nose, pace and cry. The much bigger variety of the Carian, the Magnesian, was a shield-bearer in war. And from the south of this region came the Lycaonian hounds, highly regarded for their admirable temperament.

Links with Wolves

In North Africa, Aristotle tells us that the Egyptians favoured the smaller sighthound type, comparable with the so-called Pharaoh hound and Whippet of today. The Libyans had good hounds and the Cyrenean hounds were allegedly crossed with wolves, with lurcher-like all-purpose hunting dogs known to exist in central and southern Africa. In ancient Greece, Epirus in the extreme northwest, produced the Acarnanians, which unusually for those times ran mute; the Athamanians; the Chaonians (from which came the legendary Laelaps); and the longer-eared Molossian hound. Since the cynologist Otto Keller produced his personal theory linking the latter with the big mountain dogs of Tibet and then with the Tibetan wolf, mastiff and Great Dane researchers have had a field day. The Molossians of ancient Greece were in fact usually sheepdogs, sometimes shaggy-coated and often white. Xenophon referred to the Locrians as the powerful short-faced boar-hunting hounds.

Italian Segugio at English dog show, 1992.

For me, the most important Greek hound was the Laconian, sometimes called the Spartan hound. This hound was good enough to be held in high esteem for many centuries, hence the Shakespearean reference – although the description there is not accurate. We have on record a great deal of information on the Laconian hound, a Harrier-sized scenthound with small prick ears, free from throatiness or dewlap. It was more tucked-up than our scenthounds of today but not as much as the modern sighthounds; the contemporary Italian breed, the Segugio, ears apart, being the nearest modern equivalent. Tan and white or black and tan, bold and confident, built like a steeplechaser, their fame spread wide and their blood was extensively utilized. Xenophon’s chief delight was hunting hare with them.

Equally important, however, is the Cretan hound, a superb tracker in the mountains, with one variety – the ‘outrunners’ – running free, under the control of the huntsman’s voice only, the first to do so in Europe until the end of the sixteenth century. The Cretan was subsequently crossed with the Laconian to produce the Metagon, so highly praised by Gratius but strangely by no other. It could be that the stamina-packed Laconian of the Greeks was crossed with the skilled trackers, the Segusiae of the Celts, to found the subsequent scenthound types further north, the Norman hounds, St Huberts, the great white hounds of France and the grey hounds of Louis XV.

Kritikos Lagonikos or Cretan Hound of today.

Chien de Normandie, 1897.

White Hound of France, manner of Desportes, early eighteenth century.

The Hunt of Louis XV, 1740.

Louis XV Out Hunting Stag in the Forest, by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, 1730.

Specialized Use

In time specialized functions led to specialist breeds; the Franks, for example, developing specialist hunting dogs to support their expert bersarii (for large game), veltrarii (for greyhounds), beverarici (for beavers and otters), falconers and wolf-hunters. In wolf-hunting, scenthounds and sighthounds were used in mutual support. Leashed scenthounds or limiers were usually employed to put the whole pack on the correct line, rather as ‘tufters’ do in stag-hunting to this day. Hunting with hounds became the obsession of noblemen all over the world, fortified by the medieval superstition that the strength and guile of animals passed on to man when he ate their flesh. Par force hunting, relying on the strength of hounds, may have been replaced by ‘hunting cunning’, which relies on the unravelling of confused scent by skilful hounds and big game hunting with giant hounds may have lapsed. But the pursuit of game by man with hounds spans 11,000 years and from such a heritage is likely to survive modern pressures just as the hounds themselves have adapted to each century. As perhaps the greatest hound breeder of modern times, the much-respected Isaac ‘Ikey’ Bell, Master, first of the Galway Blazers, then of the Kilkenny and later of the South and West Wilts, once wrote on behalf of Foxhounds:

And don’t think: ‘Man’s a hunter!’

It’s strictly a hound’s game.

Hunters we are by birthright;

You are but one in name.

Even though he lived by hunting, primitive man worshipped animals. In modern man also, the desire to hunt is paradoxically compatible with love of wild life. Hunting is a highly satisfying occupation for many persons because it calls into play a multiplicity of physical and mental attributes that appear to be woven into the human fabric… Certain aspects of a hunter’s life are probably more in keeping with man’s basic temperament and biological nature than urban life as presently practiced.

Rene Dubois, So Human an Animal: How We Are Shaped by Surroundings and Events (1968)

Deer tracker/herdkeeper, Vienna, 1870.

Par force hunt of the fifteenth century, Florentine School, Toulouse Museum.

Hunting by Scent

As fuming vapours rise,

And hang upon the gently-purling brook,

There, by the encumbent atmosphere compress’d,

The panting chase grows warmer as he flies,

And thro’ the network of the skin perspires;

Leaves a long – steaming – trail behind; which by

The cooler air condens’d, remains, unless

By some rude storm dispers’d, or rarefied

By the meridian sun’s heat,

To every shrub the warm effluvia cling…’

Commenting on those words by poet William Somervile, Peter Beckford wrote in his 1781 Thoughts on Hunting:

I cannot agree with Mr Somerville, in thinking that scent depends on the air only: it depends also on the soil. Without doubt, the best scent is that which is occasioned by the effluvia, as he calls it, or particles of scent, which are constantly perspiring from the game as it runs, and are strongest and most favourable to the hound, when kept by the gravity of the air to the height of his breast…

The joy of the pursuit – The Pack Splits by Thomas Blinks, 1898.

It’s the seeking of ‘best scent’ by the group of dogs covered by this book that makes them stand out; they are simply scent-driven. And we, like them, are intrigued by its mystique.

Scent Sources

As D. Caroline Coile PhD, in an article in Dogs in Canada of November, 1996, pointed out, the scenting powers of dog have long attracted the attention of the scientists; and stating that Droscher in 1971 found that a barefooted man leaves roughly four billionths of a gram of ‘odorous sweat substance’ with each step he takes. H.M. Budgett in his Hunting by Scent of 1933 found that water formed 99 per cent of such a gram in the first place. In locating this minute sweat sample, the tracking dog has to overlook the accompanying, conflicting and much more powerful surrounding smells – animal, vegetable and mineral – and most men on the run wear shoes! Caroline Coile also reported that the experiments of the Russian psychiatrists Klosovsky and Kosmarskaya on puppies led them to believe that the senses of smell and taste were so interconnected that they were virtually acting as one, and, could in general, act interchangeably.

It is now accepted that pad pressure, causing herbage (live plants) to be bruised or broken by quarry, releases sap, as well as breaking soil ‘skins’ created by surface drying or through excess moisture ‘holding up’, which leaves substantial scent. This is in contrast to the undisturbed surfaces around the pad-fall of the quarry. The released sap has a distinct odour for the hound, with pad pressure too allowing greater evaporation from the disturbed surface. Of all the scent sources, ranging from anal gland discharge, urine splash, animal blood from scratches to drops of saliva, body scent followed by bruised herbage and broken soil skins, make up the main contributors. Very dry or very wet conditions affect the surface of the soil and contribute too to scenting success – or failure!

On the question of hounds hunting more than one quarry, as opposed to pursuing one scent only, the great hound expert Sir Newton Rycroft, in his Hounds, Hunting and Country (2001), argued that hounds will always have a favourite quarry, which may not be the huntsman’s favourite quarry at any given moment. He recalled Ivester Lloyd’s words on how in the old days the Welsh Foxhounds of the Ynysfor used to hunt fox, otter, hare and pine marten. But Rycroft himself preferred to use French hounds of wolf-hunting ancestry, believing that their skilful nose on the cold drag of a wolf would assist their descendants on a fox which had a long start before them, as can occur in Forest hunting. He pointed out, however, with characteristic good sense, that ‘I cannot see what it profits a hound or pack of hounds to have inherited good noses if their huntsman has not the time, patience nor the sensitivity to allow them to develop these good noses to the full.’ Scenting skills need support! In Bloodhound trials it has been noted that the most successful hounds are those handled with the greatest rapport. The breed is also prized because of its ‘freedom from change’ capability; in other words, the Bloodhound relentlessly pursues one trail and does not get sidetracked, as the phrase appropriately goes. This breed seems to use its brains as well as its nose when unravelling scent.

Inspired by scent – On the Scent by George Wright (1860–1942).

Nose Consciousness

In his informative Gundog Sense and Sensibility (1982), Wilson Stephens writes:

To gundogs, with centuries of nose-consciousness bred into it, noses are for serious business, eyes merely come in useful occasionally. I have never needed to teach a dog to use its nose but, more often than not, have needed to inculcate the habit of using the eyes – notably, of course to mark the fall of game.

The Bloodhound – ace tracker, with understanding handler.

Bloodhound in use in the Great War to locate casualties.

Newton Rycroft writing on this in Hounds magazine in December 1995, states that:

As regards nose, it is not too difficult for a huntsman to assess the noses of individual hounds, but I think it must be more difficult for him to assess the general excellence or otherwise of their collective ability as a pack. After all, his nose is not much use to a huntsman except to carry his spectacles should he wear any. He can say ‘Looks like a scent today’ but his Labrador, whom he left behind at home, might be much more explicit.

Tracking talent is an immense hound virtue, both to the pack and to a handler.

In an informative article in the magazine Dogs in Canada in October 1983, Maryellen Rieschick pointed out the loss of scent in house dogs, going from a warm room out into a freezing day and finding no scent at all. She also wrote:

A dog learns to track people in the right direction, instead of following a trail backwards, in three ways. First, the dog learns that the lighter scent produced from the ball of the foot indicates the direction of travel. Because the weight of a person’s body is placed on the heel of the foot when he steps forward, it causes the heel to have a much heavier concentration of scent than the ball of the foot. A second way… is that individual scent ingredients will evaporate at different rates of speed…a dog can register ‘scent images’ as they change in concentration, and therefore make out the direction of the track he is following. A third method is…a steadily increasing concentration of scent…

On the Scent, Foxhounds unravelling scent, nineteenth century.

A dog reacts to the scent strength received by each nostril, hence the wavy line followed by tracking hounds, as the right nostril, then the left, perceives the best scent.