The Grand Hunt

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A grand hunt is when the wealthy and/or noble decide to go hunting. This is invariably done for sport, rather than for food — often the aim is an impressive trophy to mount on their wall, but even if the hunted animal is cooked and eaten, the hunters are doing it for the entertainment value, not to put food on the table. Hunting this way generally takes a significant amount of time, equipment, and personnel. This restricts a grand hunt to usually upper-class members. A grand hunt usually includes specialized weapons, animals trained specifically for the purpose, and/or experts in order to help make the hunt successful. A hunter on a grand hunt will almost always travel with an entourage — a handful of assistants to carry the equipment and handle the animals at least, and dozens of servants and courtiers brought along to serve the hunters' every possible whim at most. (For musical purposes, count on these to include a few horn players.) Anyone who actually hunts for food often sees these hunts as elaborate wastes of time and money, but to the grand hunters, the point is to create a social occasion (with all the attendant opportunities for networking and politicking) rather than to just kill some animals.

In theory, a grand hunt is perfectly safe, but watch out for a Hunting "Accident" or Upper Class Twits who can't shoot straight.

There are several types of grand hunts, depending largely on the type of game being hunted.

• Falconry: hunting by means of trained raptors (the Noble Bird of Prey, not the dinosaur—though that would certainly be even more awesome), including not just falcons, but also hawks and eagles. Requiring the least amount of work on the part of the hunter, and being the least dangerous, it's the only sort of hunting traditionally considered appropriate for noble ladies in addition to gentlemen. That said, it was held in high regard in several societies; Arab nobles in particular are noted for loving falconry (which makes sense, as it is very well suited to desert hunting), which goes a long way towards explaining the prevalence of hawk and eagle symbolism in Arab culture (particularly the Hawk of Quraish and Eagle of Saladin symbols so beloved of 20th-century Arab Nationalism). Depending on the type of bird being flown, game consists of anything from other, lesser birds to small mammals like rabbits. As such, this sort of hunt rarely produces anything the hunter actually uses.
• Bird hunt: birds are common and relatively unthreatening, making them good targets for hunters. Normally only specific types of birds are hunted, rather than random pigeons and sparrows, with waterfowl being a common target, though pheasants and quails also have a following. In certain regions, pigeons are in fact hunted, though usually called "squab". Dogs are often used to assist, by flushing the birds out of cover and/or retrieving them after they've been shot and fallen to the ground (often somewhere inconveniently far from the hunter). Besides meat, the main product of a bird hunt is their attractive plumage.
• Stag hunt: when hunting deer, the goal is typically an impressive set of the animal's antlers rather than their meat (which is why you're more likely to see the term "stag" or "hart" than "deer", as both mean a male deer). Typically hunted with bow and arrow, or in later eras the single-shot rifle^note Which was known and commonly used for hunting at least a hundred years before it made its way onto the battlefield in the 19th century; the issues of low rate of fire and fouling that made early rifles poor military weapons were irrelevant for hunting. This is why German rifle units of the 18th and early 19th centuries were called Jäger—the word means "Hunter" in German. or bolt-action repeating rifle, allowing the hunter to show off precision and grace while still being more manly than falconry or bird hunting. Besides antlers, the hunter usually takes the meat as food and the hide for leather.
• Big game hunt: a category that includes most predators, as well as unusually large and dangerous herbivores. Lions, bears, boar, buffalo, elephants, etc. — not to mention whatever fantasy creatures may exist in the setting. The aim of a big game hunt is usually to bring home an impressive trophy (a mounted head, an entire stuffed corpse, or some particularly impressive body parts like claws or fangs), though taking skin as pelts or leather is not uncommon, and sometimes the meat may be eaten (particularly with game like boar and buffalo that are similar to domestic meat animals). In settings with firearms, these will be hunted with rifles like stag, but of a higher caliber; in settings without firearms, spears are generally the weapon of choice. Undoubtedly the most dangerous and most expensive (and thus most prestigious) kind of hunting.
• Fox hunt: a particularly British tradition, involving men on horseback running down wild foxes with the aid of hunting dogs. The purpose is the sport itself, rather than meat or trophies — once captured, the fox may even be released rather than killed. Highly controversial in modern times due to being seen as cruel, in 2004 the UK banned hunting with hounds entirely.

Something of note: In Britain—or at least among the British aristocracy—there is a distinction between "hunting", (which generally refers to fox hunting with hounds), "shooting" (shooting birds with shotguns), and "stalking" (deer hunting with rifles, so called because you need to follow the deer over terrain and avoid detection to get a good, clean shot).^note For the record, big-game hunting is called exactly that but doesn't really happen in Britain (most large predators have been largely extirpated, and boars are also uncommon), so it's mostly limited to Great White Hunter scenarios in exotic locales. And in most works—not just British ones—falconing is usually called just that. Works set among the British upper crust commonly involve these sports and are careful to distinguish them.

Frequently overlaps with Upper-Class Equestrian, since only rich people could raise all these horses with which to go hunting for fun. See also Hunting the Most Dangerous Game, when the prey is human (or something else intelligent). Not related to Hunter of Monsters, whose prey is always some supernatural creature and usually done alone, but the Egomaniac Hunter and the Great White Hunter may take part in a grand hunt. See also The Wild Hunt, which is a grand hunt conducted by a hunting party of supernatural spirits — usually (but not always) hunting humans. Can be a Snooty Sport if it's done by the rich and depicted as obnoxious. Hunting is also often seen among the Snobby Hobbies.

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