Paper short abstract:

In fox-hunting, the movements of humans, foxes, and hounds intersect. The overall activity, however, is shaped by efforts of rival human groups to manipulate the sensory and spatial worlds that hunting's non-human participants move through.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork with hunt saboteurs - direct action animal rights activists who disrupt fox-hunting, this presentation will explore the interrelated movements of humans, foxes, and hounds at British fox-hunts.

While the movements hunting hounds should, in theory, be guided by those of the fox, they are heavily mediated by the actions of humans. Unlike in American fox-hunting, British hounds are not relied on to spontaneously find the line of the fox, but are guided by their huntsman, who will seek to manipulate both them and the fox in order to ensure the longest chase possible. Hunt saboteurs, moreover, use a variety of tactics to prevent the chase, misleading the hounds as to the location of the fox through voice calls and audio recordings, and using scent sprays to physically interrupt the trail laid by the fox.

Here, Tim Ingold's (2007, 2008, & 2015) theorisation of lines is useful, however the power differential between humans, hounds, and foxes suggests that the species are not equal in how they relate to the lines, with humans not simply moving through their own lines, but also working to manipulate the lines of others in order to ensure that multispecies encounters proceed as they wish them to.