Thread: dogs chasing deer.

Just to give you a different perspective on the issue:
Where red deer come from, they used to be chased by wolves and then by humans with hounds for centuries. ( you can check out the legend of St Hubert ). Deer are still chased by hounds , notably in france. Usually the pack is about 30 to 40 hounds of great size, as they have to chase the same stag ( never hinds) up to 7 hours and be able to cover up to 50 km. The hunters usually follow with horses, trying to not interfere with the hounds. The only communication is with the French horn called "trompe".
No electronics, no gps.
Deer that are regularly chased on a territory , know perfectly well which of of their mate is chased and they will step aside or move around with out too much worry.
The chased animal will try to use all kind of tricks to evade the hounds: crossing rivers, back tracking, looping,going through another heard of deer or even through a heard of cattle .
Over a season a lot of them escape with out getting caught. They get smarter and fitter. And it is possibly one the most natural way of hunting deer by natural selection. The deer that get caught is traditionally finished with a long knife or the same knife put at the end of a Handle and used as a spear. The meat is given to the hounds at the end of the hunt during a ceremony called " la curée".

So I would not worry to much about the issue if it is only a handful of guys doing that with their dogs here. It would have an impact on the population if the dogs are chasing about anything including hinds and fawns. Other wise it would make the deer smarter and harder to hunt which I don't have an issue with.