Fox hunting legislation

Legislation on Hunting with Dogs is in place in many countries around the world. Legislation may regulate, or in some cases prohibit the use of dogs to hunt or flush wild animal species.

The use of scenthounds to track prey dates back to Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian times and in England, hunting with Agassaei hounds was popular before the Romans. In more modern times, hunting regulation has been encouraged by the animal welfare and animal rights movements out of concern for wildlife management and alleged cruelty.

The primary law concerning French hunting dates from 1844.

Hunting with hounds was banned in Germany by Adolf Hitler's government in 1934, before which hunting laws varied from state to state. Hounds were used to pursue deer, wild boar, hares and foxes.

Hermann Göring had a passion for shooting game and appointed himself Hunting Master of the Reich (Reichsjaegermeister) soon after the Nazis gained power in 1933. He decided that more order was needed and introduced sweeping legislative changes which were enforced throughout the Reich. The Hunting Law ("Reichsjagdgesetz") of 1934 was closely modelled on the Prussian "Tier- und Pflanzenschutzverordnung" of 16th December 1929.

Hitler's cabinet was told about the hunting regulation at a meeting on July 3, 1934 - the same day that the Fuhrer reported on the ruthless killing of Stormtrooper "conspirators" in the "Night of the Long Knives", according to an official Nazi biography published four years later. Hitler was a self-declared vegetarian and hated hunting (see Adolf Hitler and vegetarianism).

The ban on hunting with hounds was unpopular with the aristocracy, many of whom hunted with hounds on horseback. Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941), the grandson of Queen Victoria, who was a keen hunter of the wild boar was powerless to stop the changes as he had abdicated and fled the country in 1918. The remaining upper classes were unable to oppose the totalitarian regime. The Nazi-era ban on hunting with hounds was passed and remains in force to this day.

Shooting game remained legal though regulated. The Act included a promise of laws that were designed to give the shooting fraternity a privileged position in the new Reich. The idea was to give every (shooting) hunter his own personal shoot after "the Third Reich's glorious victory over Europe".

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Wikipedia