The use of scenthounds to track prey dates back to Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian times and in England, hunting with Agassaei hounds was popular before the Romans.
[citation needed] Contrary to popular belief, Germany was not the first country to have enacted national laws against animal cruelty (the British Parliament adopted the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822 111 years earlier[2]: 25 ), and the process of adopting animal welfare legislation on state and local level began decades before the Nazis took power in 1933.
[2]: 37 In the 19th century, many aristocrats in the German Empire hunted with hounds on horseback, including Emperor Wilhelm II (r.
[2]: 45 It was closely modelled on the Weimar-era Prussian Tier- und Pflanzenschutzverordnung ('Animal and Plant Protection Act') of 16 December 1929.
[citation needed] In February 2002 the Scottish Parliament voted by eighty-three to thirty-six to pass legislation to ban hunting with hounds.
[citation needed] An article in The Guardian on 9 September 2004 reported that of the ten Scottish hunts, nine survived the ban, using the permitted exemption allowing them to use packs of hounds to flush foxes to guns.
[citation needed] The only prosecution of a traditional mounted hunt led to a not guilty verdict, but to a clarification of the law, with the sheriff saying that the activity of flushing foxes to guns "will require to be accompanied by realistic and one would expect, effective arrangements for the shooting of pest species.
The use of what might be termed "token guns" or what was described by the Crown as paying lip service to the legislation is not available ... as a justification for the continuation of what was referred to in the evidence before me as traditional fox hunting.
[13] The continuation of the current law regarding fox hunting in England and Wales has been guaranteed by the Scottish National Party.
Within these federal guidelines, most hunting regulation for non-migratory species rests within wildlife or agricultural departments at the state level.