fox-hunting

The pursuit of a fox across country on horseback, aided by a pack of foxhounds specially trained to track the fox's scent. The aim is to catch and kill the fox. In drag-hunting, hounds pursue a prepared trail rather than a fox.

Described by the playwright Oscar Wilde as ‘the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable’, fox-hunting has met with increasing opposition. Animal-rights activists condemn it as involving excessive cruelty, and in Britain groups of hunt saboteurs disrupt it. Fox-hunting dates from the late 17th century, when it arose as a practical method of limiting the fox population which endangered poultry farming, but by the early 19th century it was indulged in as a sport by the British aristocracy and gentry who ceremonialized it. Fox-hunting was introduced into the USA by early settlers from England and continues in the southern and middle Atlantic regions.