Page 10 - THE SLOUGHI REVIEW - ISSUE 13

T H E S L O U G H I R E V I E W 1 0

Traditional hunting with Sloughis in Tunisia. Raouf and Darb Ochi,
Marouane Meddeb and Mohamed M'Boukari 2015 © Th. Liedtke

Now all this is very little precise and rather emotional in its statement. My curiosity was
aroused and so I went in search of competent statements and my own experiences. In my
search, however, I did not find very many sources that dealt with the development of the
relationship between man and dog and certainly not with the Sloughi, i.e. the hunting dog
of North Africa. An important witness and good observer is General Eugène Daumas, who
tells us about the important things from the perspective of the middle of the 19th

century. He is thus the first to bear written witness to the Sloughi.

And yet, at the beginning of all research on the Sloughi, we talked about its culture, which
has existed for centuries, or perhaps even millennia. To hunt in an unchanged form, not
so much in the outward appearance of the Sloughi, but in the way it is used by different
peoples of different cultures. Hence culture. That is what this article is about.

The traditional hunting dog in North Africa

Sighthounds in general are defined today as hunting on sight in the form of a chase. This
means that the moment the game is startled by beaters or flushing dogs and flees, the
sighthound takes over and pursues and catches it in a fast run. We also find this in the

descriptions of, for example, the Perchino hunt about hunting with Borzoi. There, the
wild animals are driven with other dogs to the place where the hunters wait with the
Borzoi, which are then released, as we will see further on in the photo.

Hunting is not originally an end in itself, it serves to reduce the pests of fields and herds.
The aim is not to exterminate wild animals, as can happen with snares or rifles, because
hunting and killing is often excessive.