A bloodsport is a sport or entertainment which by design includes a risk that an animal or human may be killed or wounded.

The term can refer to chase sports such as coursing or beagling, combat sports such as cockfighting, or other activities. It also includes spectacles that involve pitting one animal against another in a fight. These usually involves blood being drawn, and sometimes results in the death of one or more animals.

Use of the term "blood sport"

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According to the Oxford English Dictionary the earliest use of the term is in reference to mounted hunting, where the quarry would be actively chased as in fox hunting or hare coursing. Before firearms a hunter using arrows or a spear might also wound an animal, which would then be chased and perhaps killed at close range, as in medieval boar hunting.

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