what is 'drag hunting' in french?

Question

i need to know for a piece of coursework i'm doing.

Answer 1

Drag hunting is..............


Drag hunting is a sport in which a group of dogs (usually foxhounds or Beagles) chase a scent that has been laid (dragged) over a terrain before the hunt. The scent, usually a combination of aniseed oils and possibly animal meats, is dragged along the terrain by a volunteer for any distance up to several miles to a designated finish line before the hounds are released at the start line by their owners. 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 not a blood sport in that no animal is hunted or killed and as such may become more popular in jurisdictions where blood sports, such as fox hunting, have been banned. In the United Kingdom, where fox hunting was banned in February 2005, drag hunting has often been advocated as an alternative sport by anti-hunting campaigners, such as the League Against Cruel Sports. A number of former fox hunts have announced the adoption of drag or 'trail' hunting. It is also popular in areas where hunting in the traditional sense could not exist, for example, it is possible (but sometimes unsafe) to drag hunt on land close to busy roads as the scent is laid where it is safe for the hounds to go.

Answer 2

It's possible that it doesn't exist in French because it's such a culture-specific term. You may have to paraphrase by explaining what it is and then just refer to it as 'this type of hunting' or something whenever you mention it later in your text. You could ask in the French forum on www.wordreference.com, though, to make sure.
For info, fox hunting itself is 'la chasse au renard' and hunting with hounds is 'la vénerie'.

[Edit:] I looked in the Oxford Hachette and Collins Robert French-English dictionaries, and I found 'le drag' for drag hunting. However, I haven't found that term anywhere else. I also checked in the Petit Robert monolingual French dictionary, and 'le drag' isn't in it.

'Drag hunting' has already been posted in the wordreference forum (see sources), and one of the solutions found was 'chasse à courre avec piste artificielle', although there was no definitive answer. Unfortunately, there isn't always an equivalent term in the target language. I think your only option really, as I wrote earlier, is just to explain what it is first and then call it something like 'hunting with an artificial scent' whenever you mention it afterwards.

Answer 3

I don't even know what it means in English.