With respect to boar hunting, what is the difference between "driven" and "small driven" hunts?

I am not completely sure of what you mean but by driven you are most likely speaking of "monter�a" and by "small driven" I understand you are refering to "gancho".

If that were the case the difference is that a "monteria" is a much formal hunting party with a large area to be hunted and a large number of hunters and dogs and dog drivers involved.

The "gancho" is not that formal with less people hunting a smaller area.

montero

OH MY.

What a can, nay, what a ton of worms to open, if German conditions were to be examined. You aren't trolling, perchance ?



For a very thorough and scholastic treatise on the difference, in best German learned style, I should like to refer to the (rather good) handbook



Norbert Happ:

Hege und Bejagung des Schwarzwildes,

2002 Stuttgart: Kosmos Verlag, 170 pp, throughout ill.

ISBN 3-440-09402-0, price: 14,90 Euros;



here on pp. 80-101 as to the nominal differences between Treibjagd and Dr�ckjagd. In hunting reality however, the terms and the practices mingle unabashedly.



Carcano

I'm just a simple unsophisticated American who would like to hunt in Europe. I'm not trying to start a fight over semantics or pick one coutries hunting tradition over another but I've been looking at brochures from various countries (non of them are Spain or Germany) and they mention both types of driven hunts without explanation.

A simple, non-technical explanation....in English....would be nice.

Bill, where I live the difference is that a driven hunt is a rather large affair, with up to 70 dogs and beaters and 70 or so shooters. The locals form "teams" for this kind of hunting and spend a lot of time planning these drives.

This kind of drive begins in one point and finishes in another, taking most of the day to complete the run.

Sometimes and area is swept through both ways, with the shooters turning around to face the new direction from which the drive comes. The shooters must not under any circumstances move off their assigned post. (usually drawn from a hat.)

In this kind of drive you may not shoot at all over the course of the day, or you may be presented with an entire heard of pigs to shoot at. Where I live, they only do these drives for pigs and there are basically no limits, but lots of rules, all pigs are fair game no matter the size sex or age.

Unfortunately I find this practice somewhat objectionable, as often an entire mountain or area will be invaded and everything flushed out. Some are not so scrupulus as to what they shoot at...

A small drive can also be done with just one, two or a few dogs, and a pair or more shooters, covering a small area of ground at any one time, getting into more or less strategic positions, within sight of the other shooters that may be changed as the dynamics of the situation may change.

If nothing is flushed, they may move onto another patch, set up and run the dogs through again. In this scenario, you have a better chance of getting a shot at an animal, but the quantity is usually less.

I hope that clears up somethings for you on how it's done at least in this part of the world.

Bill,



I am not quite sure what he meant with small driven hunts and driven hunts.



At the moment we have mainly two different ways of driven hunts on boar.



The first:

A big (at least for Germany) area of may be 25 m� will be filled with hunters. The number is always dependend on the area. We had here one hunt, were we have had 230 hunters. They are mainly placed on stands at the most famous paths the boars are using.



Also a lot of guys with dogs went through this area, bringing the boar on their legs.

So the hunters will have a lot of chances to get the boars. As soon as they have received another place, they will be pushed by the next group of dogs. And so on.

We had here a result of 70 boars in one morning. Also some foxes and roe deer.



The other way we have are (how to name?) "dedicated" driven hunts.

When we have new snow we can track in which area the boar are. Then we put arround this area hunters in a distance of about 60 - 80m between each. Then we put in a bunch of dogs to bring out the boar.

Those hunts are much smaller and quick arranged driven hunts (we say "kreisen" which means encircle) which can give also good result (on 6th January we got 7 within an hour)

In the same way you can do without snow, just on suspicion that they may be in that area.





May be this was meant.





Best regards

Bill, the reason you probably have not received a more definitive answer, is because you could not pose your question more precisely. I'm guessing you are citing from brochures or sales material (say) about pig hunting in Europe, that you are perusing. Yes?? And you ran into the descriptions of "driven hunts", as well as "small driven hunts". Correct??

I'm not going to be much different from the other guys having replied above. One way to interpret the difference would be between "organized" driven hunts - sometimes these affairs can get rather large with up to 20-50 hunters and as many beaters and dogs. You can obviously also do driven hunts with a smaller number of shooters and beaters, all the way down to "informal" drives with maybe 2-3 shooters and 2-3 beaters. So it would be easy to imagine a scale for driven hunts from "large" to "small", but where exactly you'd set the boundary would be a matter of definition. In any event concepts such as large or small are relative anyway.

Did this help, or simply confuse matters totally??
- mike