'A Rare And Special

A day splashing about in the river with the Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire Minkhounds is a reminder of the long-gone art of otterhunting

- Frank Houghton Brown

TO be able to hunt an otter successfully, an otter hound was said to need a “bulldog’s courage, a Newfoundland’s strength in water, a pointer’s nose, a retriever’s sagacity, the stamina of a foxhound, the patience of a beagle and the intelligence of a collie”.

With partially webbed feet, a thick, oily double coat, a deep booming voice and the ability to hunt a stale line 72 hours old, the otter hound has been bred for centuries especially to hunt in water, deep or shallow. The scent of an otter would float down on the water and these persistent animals would spend hours dragging up to their quarry with the most intricate venery of the highest order as they worked out the line on the swirls and currents of the water, or perhaps across dry land to another watercourse.

The otter hound is the most endangered native breed in the UK and there are only 600 of these fine animals left worldwide.

The otter was once considered a pest by many riparian owners and fishermen but, as it became scarce in the 1970s, mainly due to the effects of pesticides on the river ecosystems, all hunts enacted a voluntary end to its hunting. The hunts that remained switched to hunting mink or coypu as both of these species are not native to the UK, had escaped into an alien environment and were causing havoc on British waterways. One of the many follies of the Hunting Act is that no longer is it legal to hunt the verminous mink with the hounds that are so well suited to the job, despite the damage that this indiscriminate killer can do to the endangered water vole population or to nesting waterfowl — but it is quite in order to hunt a rabbit or a rat.

KENNEL CLUBREGISTERED