Earth dog hunting – legal animal cruelty in the name of hunting tradition

Earth dog hunting is legal animal cruelty: dogs are driven into fox and badger dens. Why this hunting practice is cruel, pointless and outdated.

Editorial team Wild beim Wild — 26 October 2025

While dogfighting, cockfighting and any form of setting animals against one another are prohibited throughout the DACH region, a small hunting minority is permitted to do exactly that and calls it earth dog hunting.

Behind this innocuous-sounding term lies an archaic cruelty that has nothing to do with closeness to nature or stewardship, but is simply a matter of bloodlust, the exercise of power, and fetishisation of tradition.

The hunters' language romanticises it: dogs “work” the den, the fox is “flushed out.” The reality is brutal: a hunting dog is forced into the narrow den, where it encounters a fox or badger, and a fight ensues. Blood, bites, mortal fear. No one supervises, no one protects. The suffering takes place in the dark, silently, but systematically.

If a private individual were to set their dog on a wild animal and send it into a den, that would be a clear case of animal cruelty. Yet under the guise of hobby hunting, exactly this scenario is legal. The legislature here protects not the animals, but the privileges of a lobby that has resisted every reform for decades.

Hunting romanticism or sadism?

The hunting community likes to claim that earth dog hunting is “necessary” to protect small game. A transparent pretext: studies show that fox hunting has no lasting effect on the population whatsoever. The real reason is a different one: hunting enthusiasts want to indulge “their” tradition. They want to stage bloody fights and ultimately pose triumphantly with the killed animal. It is nothing other than legalised sadism in a green loden coat.

Particularly insidious: not only the wild animals, but also the hunting dogs are victims of this practice. Injuries from bites, torn ears, broken bones — all of this is knowingly accepted. The same hobby hunters, who present themselves as “dog lovers,” deliberately send their animals into life-threatening situations. This is a betrayal of dogs, not love.

A relic from dark times

Earthdog hunting is an anachronism. It originates from an era in which animal suffering played no role and hobby hunters acted as masters over nature and creature alike. Anyone who still practices earthdog hunting today demonstrates one thing above all: that they are stuck in the 19th century. In a modern society that has enshrined animal protection in its constitution, this practice is nothing short of a disgrace.

Earthdog hunting is not tradition, but animal cruelty with a hunting licence. It contradicts every ethical principle and every modern concept of animal welfare. As long as this bloody practice remains permitted, animal protection legislation is a toothless paper tiger and hunting is a dark stain on a society that pretends to be civilised.

Dossiers: Hunting and animal welfare | Fox in Switzerland: Most hunted predator without a lobby | Fox hunting without facts: How JagdSchweiz invents problems

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