Cave paintings tell of man’s primordial struggle against beast, a true battle for survival. But the hunt as we now conceive of it is not that; rather, it is that province of kings and vain aristocrats who set about depopulating the world of some of its most beautiful species, all for the sake of sport. La chasse, the more evocative French term for the hunt, for centuries involved packs of hounds and commonfolk who didn’t have much of a choice about getting mucky in the woods in order to flush out the hunting party’s prey. The noble gentry arrived on horse just in time to impale, shoot or otherwise finish off their quarry, though who knows how many of their feudal subjects got maimed in the process. The tradition of the hunt perseveres, both in the form of utterly needless, twee spectacles like this and purer, more elemental examples of what hunting is really all about — like clubbing baby seals.
Watch: “A French Hound Hunt Sniffs Controversy”