The Rise of Clean-Boot Hunting
Imagine being pursued across the English countryside by a pack of baying bloodhounds - for many, this sounds like a nightmare scenario used to highlight hunting's cruelty. Yet surprisingly, increasing numbers of people are voluntarily becoming human quarry in what may soon become the only legal way to hunt with dogs in England and Wales.
This emerging country pursuit, known as clean-boot hunting, has the rare distinction of gaining support from both the League Against Cruel Sports and some former fox hunters. The Guardian's Matthew Weaver recently joined the human quarry of the New Forest Hounds to experience this unusual sport firsthand.
Inside the New Forest Hounds
The Victorian kennels, originally built for foxhounds and still topped with a fox-shaped weathervane, now house 40 excited bloodhounds. Will Day, joint master of the hunt, assures nervous participants that despite their ghoulish name, bloodhounds are very soft and friendly creatures unlike their foxhound counterparts.
Professional huntsman Danny Allen, one of NFH's three full-time employees who lives at the kennels with his young family, declares this is the future of hunting. Allen leads the hunt in a bright green jacket, calling hounds with a horn while also managing the less glamorous task of retrieving dead livestock to feed the pack.
The preparation for becoming human quarry involves some unusual rituals. Runners are advised not to shower or use deodorant before hunts to ensure they're at their smelliest. Weaver describes being asked to stand inside the hunt lorry to allow the hounds to familiarise themselves with his body odour.
The Hunt Experience
The gathering outside the Bold Forester's pub features all the traditional hunt trappings - horse riders in jodhpurs, hunting horns, and copious port - but notably lacks both hunt saboteurs and a fox. After the 2004 hunting ban, NFH switched to trail hunting before transitioning again to clean-boot hunting in 2020 when Forestry England suspended trail hunting on its land.
During the hunt, human quarry receive a head start before the bloodhounds are released. The experience involves scrambling across thick bracken, heather and gorse while listening for the ominous sound of deep barking growing closer. Bloodhounds, used worldwide for tracking missing people and criminals, can run three times faster than humans on rough ground and famously don't give up pursuit easily.
Weaver and his fellow runners covered more than eight miles across five separate hunts, navigating bogs, rivers and woods. Despite their fears, the hounds showed no aggression upon catching their human quarry, instead displaying wet snouts and slobbery jowls before quickly losing interest and preparing for the next chase.
The journalist concluded that being hunted by hounds is strangely exhilarating - certainly more exciting than a typical Parkrun - while providing a potential future for hunting traditions within legal boundaries.
