page_title: Hunting
section_title: Use of dog
hierarchical_section_title: Hunting / History / Use of dog
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Jachtgezellen: twee jachthonden bij een stoel waartegen een jachtgeweer en weitas staan.
context_page_description: Hunting is the practice of seeking, pursuing and capturing or killing wild animals. Hunting wildlife or feral animals is most commonly done by humans for meat, recreation, to remove predators that can be dangerous to humans or domestic animals, to remove pests that destroy crops or kill livestock, or for trade. Many non-human species also hunt - see predation.
  Regulations distinguish lawful hunting from poaching, which involves the illegal killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species. The species that are hunted are referred to as game or prey and are usually mammals and birds. Economists classify hunting as part of primary production - alongside forestry, agriculture and fishing.
  Hunting by humans arose in Homo erectus or earlier, in the order of millions of years ago. Hunting has become deeply embedded in human culture.
  Hunting can be a means of pest control. Hunting advocates state that hunting can be a necessary component of modern wildlife management, for example, to help maintain a population of healthy animals within an environment's ecological carrying capacity when natural checks such as predators are absent or very rare.
context_section_description: Although various other animals have been used to aid the hunter, such as ferrets, the dog has assumed many very important uses to the hunter.
  The domestication of the dog has led to a symbiotic relationship in which the dog's independence from humans is deferred. Though dogs can survive independently of humans, and in many cases do, as with feral dogs, where hunger is not a primary factor, the species tends to defer to human control in exchange for habitation, food and support.
  Dogs today are used to find, chase, retrieve, and sometimes to kill the game. Hunting dogs allow humans to pursue and kill prey that would otherwise be very difficult or dangerous to hunt. Different breeds of dogs are used for different types of hunting. Waterfowl are commonly hunted using retrieving dogs such as the Labrador Retriever, the Golden Retriever, the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, the Brittany Spaniel, and other similar breeds. Game birds are flushed out using flushing spaniels such as the English Springer Spaniel, the various Cocker Spaniels and similar breeds.
  The hunting of wild mammals in England and Wales with dogs was banned under the Hunting Act 2004. The wild mammals include fox, hare, deer and mink.  Hunting with dogs is permissible, however, where it has been carried out in accordance with one of the exceptions in the Act.
caption: Hunting Companions, Dutch 19th-century painting featuring two dogs, a shotgun and a game bag
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