Drag hunting (also spelled draghunting) is a sport dating to the early nineteenth century. A group of dogs (usually foxhounds or beagles) chases a scent that has been laid (dragged) over a course with a defined beginning and end, before the hunt. The scent, usually a combination of aniseed oils and possibly animal meats or urine, is dragged along the terrain by a volunteer for any distance up to several kilometres to a designated finish line before the hounds are released at the start line by their owners.
Drag hunting emphasises the thrill of riding at speed in a natural environment, and tends to follow a relatively straightforward course, allowing for considerable speed, over well-marked obstacles designed or selected with the safety of horse and rider in mind.
The hound first crossing the finish line wins the race. A variation is that the hounds are followed by a group of participants on horseback and, without a designated finish line, the hunt ends when the dogs catch up with the volunteer.
Drag hunting is related to but distinct from trail hunting.
Trail hunting rose to prominence in England after the Hunting Act 2004 banned the hunting of mammals with dogs in that jurisdiction. Like drag hunting, trail hunting involves the use of an artificially laid scent to provide hounds with a path to follow. Unlike drag hunting, however, the path set for the hounds in trail hunting is designed to simulate the path that would be taken by a fox attempting to evade the hounds. The path will shift and double-back on itself unpredictably, pass over natural and artificial obstacles, and cross a variety of terrain.
Trail hunting emphasises hound work, exercising and developing the ability of a pack of scent hounds to identify and pursue a prey animal, and the ability of the horse and rider to follow the pack.
Neither drag hunting nor trail hunting involve the hunting or killing of animals, and as such are suitable for jurisdictions where blood sports, such as fox hunting, have been banned.
However, in England, there have been persistent allegations by the League Against Cruel Sports that fox hunts have been falsely claiming that they have converted to trail hunting, to allow them to carry on with the intentional pursuit of live foxes. The Hunting Act 2004 has an exemption from prosecution for individuals and organisations whose hounds unintentionally pursue and kill mammals, and the League claims that purported trail hunters regularly lay scent paths in areas that they know contain foxes, in the hopes of encouraging their hounds to "accidentally" pick up the trail of a live fox. For this reason, the League advocates drag hunting as a humane alternative to traditional fox hunting, but expresses scepticism about trail hunting.
Because of the controversy over trail hunts being fronts for illegal fox hunting, and to avoid confusion, the Masters of the Draghounds and Bloodhounds Association in England has vigourously asserted its rights to the term "drag hunting" or "draghunting". The English Masters of the Foxhounds Association has complied with their wishes, and generally uses the term "trail hunting" for the legal activities of its members.