Yes to hunting, no to bloodsports

15th October 2010

I think it's necessary for people to realise, about horses, hounds and hunting, that the hounds can and do follow on nicely to a bag or sack of Aniseed. So the people CAN on the day of the hunt, go out early, dragging the bag of Aniseed along from a vehicle, a rope tied to the bag and onto the vehicle, laying a trail of Aniseed. Later when the "meet" is ready to go, the hounds will and can follow the trail of Aniseed. This is called "drag-hunting", and means there is no need to slaughter the animals, at all. While "laying the trail", the people will need to stop the vehicle, unclip the rope and drag the bag toward the fence, put through the fence and then re-attached to the vehicle. There is such a thing, using a hunter's horn, of "calling off the hounds" that means they will stop and wait for the next signal to go on ahead, that also means at a drag-hunt that if the hounds pick up the scent of the animals, they can be stopped and ordered to follow the Aniseed trail. It is also safer, especially for young folk, since the jumps can be selected instead of more or less random, selected according to where the bag of scent was laid. It's not always a good idea to lay the trail the day or night before, since the trail can be lost easily that way.
I'm told this is no all that commonplace, mostly because people don't know about it.
I do think this message could be given to the Hunt Clubs, to discouraged bloodsports, by giving an alternative.

To organise the drag-hunting as it is called, there needs to be a sack of "aniseed", and I'm not certian if it's just a bag of aniseeds plants, flowers and all or not, or if other very attractive to dogs things be in the sacks, it must be very, very attractive for them, so they will gladly follow the scent.