HUNTING DOG BREEDS AND THEIR HISTORY IN FRANCE

Hounds

They are dogs with drooping ears, giving voice to the passage of an animal by pursuing it by scent without seeing it.

Hounds Breeds:

Poitevin

Billy

French white and black

Great Gascony Blue

Pointing dogs

The work of the pointing dog consists in prospecting the ground (quest) in front of the hunter to detect the game there, then to block it by its stop. Two categories among the pointing dogs: the continental and the British.

Some continentals:

Drahthaar

munsterlander

Braque d'Auvergne

Braque du Bourbonnais

french pointer

Braque Saint Germain

Brittany Spaniel

Pont-Audemer Spaniel

Picardy Spaniel

French spaniel

Wirehaired Pointing Griffon

German Shorthaired Pointer

Setter (English, Gordon, Irish)

Game breeders

These very active and very effective little hunting dogs  - in principle but all the difficulty of training is there - under the gun, take the track, and raise the game. They are particularly appreciated in the woods, in brush and thickets, on rabbits, pheasants, woodcocks. They also make excellent retrievers, including in water.

The Springer Spaniel

The Cocker Spaniel

Irish Water Spaniel

Retrievers

Labrador

Golden retriever

Their job is to find dead or injured game and bring it back to the hunter. The English are past masters in the art of training retrievers for great pheasant drives. Enduring and specialists in the relationship with water, they are especially in France the essential companions of waterfowl hunters.

Terrier dogs

They work underground to trap foxes and badgers in burrows, and sometimes nutria. Their morphology must be adapted to this exercise, allowing them to pass through narrow galleries.

Dachshunds

Fox terrier

Jack russel terrier

The specificity of hounds

It is difficult to think of “hounds” without associating “hound hunting” with it, as these canine breeds are linked to the practice of hunting. For ages, hunters have been able to enlist the services of dogs specific to pursue the game, either to take it, or to push it towards a trap, and to "give voice", to indicate the course of the hunt.

From the Middle Ages, kings and lords established breeds to force stags, wild boars, roe deer and wolves. The Fauve de Bretagne was one of the four royal breeds. It is certainly one of the oldest, which still exists today, but whose standard has changed to adapt to our times. "A lord of Lamballe, writes du Fouilloux, famous hunting author, with a pack of fawn and red dogs, launched a deer into a forest in the region of Poinctièvre, and hunted and chased it for the space of four days, so that the last day, he went to pick it up near the city of Paris”.

"The simple gentlemen adds Henri de la Blanchière, in the work "hunting dogs" published in 1875, did not breed much of this breed because, apart from the deer, it had little regard for the hare and ran too easily known to cattle; which indicates somewhat wild friends! "

Before the revolution, only the nobility and the clergy had the “right to pack” and it was only after 1789 that hunting – including with hounds – became more democratic. However, the maintenance of a pack was not within the reach of all budgets. In fact, the advent of firearms, around 1850, democratized the hunting of hounds much more than did the Revolution: it was enough to have a few good dogs without being too formal about the breed, to release them in a shed on a fresh "foot" and to stand on the presumed path of the game to shoot it.

An extract from “Gentilshommes chasseurs”, the most famous book by the Marquis de Foudras, published in 1848, perfectly illustrates the passage and the difference between the “order dog” of huntsmen and the “current” of hunters. Twenty years before the Revolution, a great-uncle of the Marquis fell in love with hunting, which he infallibly practiced every day of the year - except Easter Day - keeping seventy Ardennes dogs in his kennel, light and tireless. When old age arrived, the unrepentant hunter had to give up riding. The Revolution having also confiscated a large part of his property, he decided to sell his Ardennais, to replace them with a small pack of basset hounds “with slow feet but with a resounding voice and an infallible sense of smell. If we no longer forced ourselves as before, we consoled ourselves by shooting with guns and studying the tricks of the game, more master of his intelligence in front of slower dogs. The bassets also made it possible to adapt to the fragmentation and respect of properties, which the nobles did not really care about under the Ancien Régime. These new hounds were often mongrels of the hounds of order. The lighter, which denoted various country races, enjoyed the favor of many hunters. The origin of the name is indicative of the lack of consideration that the great hunters of yesteryear gave to hunters using these small dogs: the beagle was also called bracon hence... poacher.

Hunting is currently experiencing a certain revival, with hunts being followed by more and more amateurs. The "order dogs", so called because this hunt requires great discipline on the part of dogs who must "stay under the whip" throughout the year, therefore still have a bright future ahead of them. French, Anglo-French tricolors, Poitevins, porcelains, Bleus de Gascogne and many others should make our deep forests resound for a long time to come with the echoes of their devilish intrigues.

As for hound hunting, it has developed in France, to the point of becoming very popular, and has won its letters of nobility. Today it is favored by many hunters, except in the north and east. If this method of hunting is also very successful in Italy, it is very little practiced in the Germanic countries and northern Europe, where it is preferred silent hunts called selective, approach and lookout, in which the role of the dog is limited to the possible search for wounded game. The English remained big fans of hunting, foxes in particular, but hunting hounds did not develop in a popular way, as it does with us. However, even if our chauvinism suffered from it, it must be recognized that English hounds, both for hunting and for shooting, are very successful in France. These imported dogs produced breeds like the Anglo-French. Others, such as beagles or harriers, which have retempered our lighters, still enjoy the favors of shotgun hunters.

This mode of hunting has adapted to its time and the joyful chaos that once reigned no longer prevails. First of all, hunters found themselves faced with the demographic explosion of deer, resulting from the hunting plan. Nothing is more painful, for a team of hunters hoping for a good hunt on a wild boar, a fox or a capuchin, than to see the dogs go after a deer when this one is not the desired game!

To avoid these misadventures, these days of hunting aborted by the departure of a "biquet", the hunters had to train their dogs, select them, discipline them, as the hunters did before them. The key word in the hunt for hounds is now: "created". A dog created on the fox or the boar must not leave on a roe deer or on a hare: it is the rule.

Created dogs, for the respect of ethics.

"You have to teach them what's good and what's not," explains a boatswain. The good subjects understand very quickly and then there is no longer any need to educate the young dogs : their elders take care of it”.

Respect for the property of others also requires well groomed dogs. This increased difficulty for the practice of hunting has caused a new enthusiasm, in the respect of a more severe ethics which has found its rules.

Hound competitions and trials are held in many regions over thousands of acres, attracting large crowds. The fox hunting patents in Brittany are real hunting events.

Each year, certain small villages in the Monts d'Arrée become, for a weekend, the capital of the hound.

Paradoxically, the strong development of the wild boar, hunting animal for hounds par excellence, has cast some shadow on this hunt. The black beasts have settled down. Their hunt has lost in magnitude what it has gained in abundance. Hence the strong appearance of English and German terriers, who have often dethroned our currents, especially in Champagne and Picardy.

Hunting, with these small dogs which hardly follow the game beyond a few hundred meters, is easier. It allows guns posted to better judge animals that show up without being chased, and helps in management.