# History of Hunting?



## Orangehorse (3 November 2017)

I was just having a little think to myself about this.  At one time hunting must have been confined to very, very large landowners - the king, bishops, dukes, etc. who hunted deer which was used for eating (saw an exhibition one time that stressed that most people just hunted for the pot - hum, don't believe it.)

Then in Tudor and Elizabethan times it was the start of the rise of a Middle Class.  I guess not many people went hunting of any sort during the Civil War, Oliver Cromwell period and then there was the Restoration of Charles II.

Am I right that this was the start of fox hunting?  Almost a "keeping up with the Jones" that rich landowners who were from the Merchant classes wanted to hunt because it was the thing to do, but they didn't have vast Forests and Chases that were previously the hunting areas.  I suppose some had deer parks as it was fashionable and the thing to have but there must have been lesser landowners too.

I went to a talk by a Professor who had researched some local history and the place of the horse, and was using records from local estates that his audience would be familiar with.  He said that in the 18th/19th century a "gentleman" was just supposed to hunt and shoot and if they didn't they were regarded as completely weird, so your scientifically minded, academic sort that didn't want to was an object of ridicule.

I am correct about this?  I have put down what I think was the development of hunting without doing any research about dates, just as a throw out for a discussion.


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## Equi (3 November 2017)

It depends what hunting you are referring to tbh. Since man started to farm, they have had to do pest control. Perhaps even before that i would think - cause who wants the competition and danger. Yea over the years it will have become more tails and whiskey...but you only have to look at some tribes in the world that still have no iphones type thing....they will still have a hunting gathering and celebrate the killing of a predator they deem dangerous to them or the animals they hunt for food.

Humans go into ethics a lot...forgetting we are still at basic level primal predators. Chimps will kill animals and a predator and celebrate this too...they just don't have whiskey.


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## Orangehorse (3 November 2017)

I mean fox hunting/beagling as a sport in England, Ireland, France.  Stag hunting was confined to large tracts of land like Exmoor and I think even the New Forest until fairly recent times.


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## Shay (4 November 2017)

Is fox hunting a sport?  I'm not sure pest control is really quite the same thing?

The concept of hunting prey using a scenting dog is pre historic.  The first recorded instance of a man using dogs to reduce fox population was - allegedly - in 1534 when farm dogs were used. Although foxes were listed as a "beast of the field" for hunting purposes in laws passed in 1340 there is little evidence they were deliberately hunted as they were unpopular as food.   It is not known if the Norfolk farmer in 1534 followed his dogs on foot, or mounted, or used them in the form of terriers.  The first use of a pack of dogs specifically trained to track a fox occurred in the 1600's.  The first fox hunt pack was said to be in Bilsdale, Yorkshire.  A pack of fox hunting hounds were recorded as being imported from the UK to Maryland US in 1650.  When the Enclosure Acts were passed in the 1700's deer hunting became more difficult; hunting foxes and hare became more popular.  What we might consider "modern" fox hounds began in he 1800's with Hugo Maynell, then master of the Quorn Hunt,  who began to document the breeding of hounds and horses specifically for fox hunting.  The first group opposed to fox hunting formed in 1891 - the Humanitarian League.

The social stereotypes of hunting also began in the 1800's with much literature either making reference to the practice, and to the manners etc associated with it; or writing about the subject directly.  Jorrocks Jaunts and Jollites (Surtees) was published in 1838;  Trollope Published "Hunting Sketches" in 1896.

Does this help?


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## Orangehorse (4 November 2017)

That helps a lot Shay, thank you.


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## GTRJazz (4 November 2017)

When I see Hunts I think of the battle of Waterloo the uniform of the English was Red like the Hunting Pink and Grey Horses held in high regard, the Scots Grey's did a charge at the battle to break up the French battle squares. Hunting would have been a good way for the returning soldiers to adjust to the drudge of normal life.


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## Shay (5 November 2017)

Probably not in 1815.  Battle stress, adjustment issues etc were not recognized until very recently.  But drag hunts were in fact established in initially in 1863 by the Household Cavalry and followed by the Royal Military Academies in 1870.  It was a means of training soldiers about to join a mounted unit.  They needed something fast and challenging but more predictable than following a wild animal.


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## Meredith (5 November 2017)

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought The Duke of Wellington had some hounds for hunting during the Peninsular War pre 1815


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## Shay (5 November 2017)

Absolutely - as I said in my first post.  Fox hunting with dedicated hounds has been around since at least the 1600's.  I don't think they took a pack to Portugal to fight though - but open to being corrected on that.  The 1815 reference was to the battle of Waterloo mentioned by GTR Jazz.


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## GTRJazz (5 November 2017)

Shay said:



			Absolutely - as I said in my first post.  Fox hunting with dedicated hounds has been around since at least the 1600's.  I don't think they took a pack to Portugal to fight though - but open to being corrected on that.  The 1815 reference was to the battle of Waterloo mentioned by GTR Jazz.
		
Click to expand...

Saved by the Germans, ironic we would fight them a 100 years later


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## Fiagai (1 December 2017)

Orangehorse said:



			I mean fox hunting/beagling as a sport in England, Ireland, France.  Stag hunting was confined to large tracts of land like Exmoor and I think even the New Forest until fairly recent times.
		
Click to expand...

In Ireland at least there are much earlier  historic references to the control of predators especially wolves by hunting. In Ireland the  Brehon  laws were a codacised legal system which detailed that predators such as wolves 

 "did pose a threat to livestock, if not to humans. If you rented land in Gaelic Ireland you were likely to find that your lease obliged you to keep wolfhounds and to engage in regular wolf hunts on your landlord&#8217;s behalf &#8211; these might be as frequent as once a week."

http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifest...w-the-irish-wolf-went-to-the-dogs-136443.html

It is easy to postulate that other predators of livestock such as foxes were hunted in a similar manner. Hunting on horseback is also recorded in many of the ancients annals.







Illustration from Topographia Hiberniae showing wolf and fox


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