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Animal Welfare Concerns with Hound Hunting


	This abandoned coonhound was found hungry and suffering from mange. ©The HSUS

Dogs used for deer hound hunting—usually coonhounds—are often kept in miserable conditions. Dogs are typically kept in kennels outdoors, often with no shelter from the elements.

One of our members contacted The HSUS to complain that he saw hounds kept outdoors with little shelter in all conditions, including during hurricanes, that the "poor dogs only get out of their kennels about five weekends a year."

"They so badly want attention and room to run. It breaks my heart to watch them try to play within their small confines and step in their own feces every day."

Perpetual Neglect

One hunter wrote us to complain about the appalling cruelty she had witnessed at the hands of a number of hunters. In one pen there "was no food, no water and feces 3 inches thick. One female was standing with all 4 feet on a cinderblock to avoid the muck."

She said that "many of these hounds I find are nothing but skin and bones, infested with fleas, ticks, wounded. A few weeks ago there was a hound trying to reach into my pen to try to get food...she was a skeleton with hair and no collar."

She complained that hunters refused to take their dogs to the veterinarian, and it can be assumed that the dogs were shot or dumped to avoid the expense.

"I noticed a dog at a hunt club that would not use its back leg," she said. "The week before it was fine. The owner told me it had been hit by a car. He never took the dog to the vet...and it soon disappeared from the pens."

Cheaper To Shoot Them Than To Treat Them

"At the same club I noticed a dog chewing on its leg," she went on. "Looking closer I noticed that the leg looked like it had gotten caught in an animal trap. I told the owner. I called my vet who said a dog will often chew off an injured limb when it has no feeling left in it...Dog not carried to vet...."

The dog disappeared soon thereafter, she noted.

"I have come to the conclusion [that] hunt clubs spend as little as possible on dog food."
—A caring member

In another instance, she said a hunter called her to ask her opinion of "a dog that had been in a fight and the bone was exposed on the back leg."

"He said, 'What should I do, I don't want to take the dog to the vet.'"

She says she has seen many club dogs "with fleas so bad that they were almost hairless, and were covered with bloody, pus-filled sores from scratching...I have seen hunting dogs that grew quickly and the owner didn't care enough to loosen the collar. One dog yelped when I touched the neck, and upon removal of the collar I got a whiff of the eroding, bloody, pus oozing skin underneath, and I had to back up."

No Way To Treat a Dog

Many hound hunters believe that dogs will hunt better when they are hungry and admit to only feeding them every few days, though many feed them far less frequently. Hunting dogs are frequently severely emaciated and many shelters report that few hunting dogs are not underweight when they arrive at the shelter.

One member wrote us, complaining that "emaciated dogs come onto my property, dogs with ribs sticking out so far they collapse—gasping for air; some have even died here...I pull dead or dying dogs off the roads—this year alone I removed 9, last year 14."

Another member said the "the hounds all have been undernourished and extremely skinny, some downright emaciated, with their bones sticking out at hips, ribs, chest, etc. ...their electric collars or any collar for that matter usually appear to be heavier than the dog."

"I have come to the conclusion [that] hunt clubs spend as little as possible on dog food, run the dogs until they drop and then go out and buy fresh dogs as needed."

Another member said that one of the dogs she rescued "was starved almost to death and, upon visit to the vet, was found to have advanced heartworms, kidney failure and a cancerous tumor in her nasal passage."

No Way To Treat Wildlife, Either

The suffering doesn't stop with the dogs. Hunting dogs are also known to tear apart wildlife if they are able to, particularly young animals.

Packs of dogs can also disrupt wildlife and separate mothers from their young, leaving them to starve.

Learn more about hound hunting.

Hounds Are Little More Than Equipment to Hunters

Landowner Complaints about Hound Hunting

Hounding The Animal Shelters, Too

Hound Hunting's Decline, State by State