Many Greek- and Roman- influenced countries have long traditions of hunting with hounds. Hunting with Agassaei hounds was popular in Celtic Britain, even before the Romans arrived, introducing the Castorian and Fulpine hound breeds which they used to hunt.Norman hunting traditions were brought to Britain when William the Conqueror arrived, along with the Gascon and Talbot hounds.

Foxes were referred to as beasts of the chase by medieval times, along with the red deer (hart & hind), martens, and roes, but the earliest known attempt to hunt a fox with hounds was in Norfolk, England, in 1534, where farmers began chasing foxes down with their dogs for the purpose of pest control .The first use of packs specifically trained to hunt foxes was in the late 1600s, with the oldest fox hunt being, probably, the Bilsdale in Yorkshire.

By the end of the seventeenth century, deer hunting was in decline. The Inclosure Acts brought fences to separate open land into fields, deer forests were being cut down, and arable land was increasing.
With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, people began to move out of the country and into towns and cities to find work. Roads, rail, and canals split hunting countries,but also made hunting accessible to more people. Shotguns were improved during the nineteenth century and the shooting of gamebirds became more popular.

SPRING HUNT ATTIRE

Fox hunting developed further in the eighteenth century when Hugo Meynell developed breeds of hound and horse to address the new geography of rural England.

In Germany, hunting with hounds (which tended to be deer or boar hunting) was first banned on the initiative of Hermann Göring on July 3, 1934. In 1939, the ban was extended to cover Austria after Germany’s annexation of the country. Bernd Ergert, the director of Germany’s hunting museum in Munich, said of the ban, “The aristocrats were understandably furious, but they could do nothing about the ban given the totalitarian nature of the regime.”

Fox Hunt today is just a Sport and most of the hunts don’t kill the foxes.