Black and Tan Virginia Foxhound

The Black and Tan Virginia Foxhound can trace its prey back to the Huntinganhoods pack of many other breeds. During the Middle Ages, hunting with packs of dogs became one of the favorite games of European nobility, particularly in England and France. French hunters developed dozens of different varieties of the hound, of which the two oldest and most influential were the Grand Blue de Gascogne and St. Hubert’s Hound. When the Normans invaded England in 1066, they brought their French dogs with them. The English used these French hounds and existing British breeds to develop their own set of myrrh hound breeds, including the southern hound, north country beagle, bloodhound, harrier, and talbot. At the same time, hunters in other countries, such as Germany and Spain, were developing their hound breeds, although they did not necessarily reflect the diversity or pure-blooded nature of the Franco-English hounds.

For many centuries, English hunters preferred big game, especially deer. It was thought to be under the nobility to hunt foxes, which were thought to be vermin. This task was left to the common farmers, which they had performed with dogs since at least 1534. Larger pack, faster and more robust trail. However, most farmers could only keep one or two hounds. To solve this problem, farmers started keeping their dogs in large packs and cleaned many farms in a single day. These hunts quickly turned into large social events. By the end of the 16th century growing population and development had overtaken most of the wooded places in England and as a result the population of deer fell. The English aristocracy turned to foxes to hunt fast for this loss. Although English and Scottish farmers hunted a variety of pure and mixed-breed foxes with great success, the nobles wanted to develop a dog specifically for fox hunting. He used the now-extinct Southern Hound, a deer hunting specialist as a base, but heavily surpassed it with other breeds. No one knows for sure which dogs were used, but it is generally agreed that bloodhound, talbot, North Country beagles, harriers, beagle-type dogs, mixed-breed odor wounds. , Greyhound, Scottish Deerhound, Fox Terriers, pointers and Old English Bulldogs played a part. It is also generally suggested that setters, spaniels, lurchers, dalmatians, and collie-type dogs may also be included. The resulting English foxhound proved so unsustainable on the hunting fox that it probably extincted the most heavily hunted British breeds.

By the mid-17th century, fox hunting was the primary and most favored sport of the British upper classes. The game became so popular that foxes, originally thought to be serious agricultural pests, had to be imported from other European countries. During this time, the first British colonies were being established on the eastern seaboard. Many of these residents had a desire to hunt foxes in their new homes. In 1650, Robert Burke imported the first known pack of English foxheads to Maryland, which later became America’s first Master of the Hounds. A very large proportion of settlers in the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Virginia and Maryland came from upper class backgrounds, many of whom were second, third, or higher sons who were looking for wealth, denied them by British inheritance laws. Was. As a result, Virginia and Maryland became hotbeds of American fox hunting, a situation they still hold today.