who said, “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said: ‘When you release your trained dog and pronounce the name of Allah, then eat whatever it catches for you.’ I asked, ‘Even if it kills the prey?’ He replied, ‘Even if it kills it, so long as no other dog that was not with it joins in.’ ”
Al-Majd commented: “This is evidence that the game is lawful, whether the dog kills it by wounding or by strangling.”
What al-Majd affirmed is one report from Imam Aḥmad, adopted by Ibn Ḥāmid and Ibn al-Jawzī; it is also the apparent sense of al-Khiraqī’s wording and one of the opinions narrated from Imam al-Shāfiʿī.
The well-known position in the school, however, is stated in Sharḥ al-Iqnāʿ and elsewhere: “A clawed predator must wound the quarry. If it kills it by battering or by choking, the game is not lawful, for it has killed without a wound.”
8- His words, “if it catches for you,” are spelled out explicitly in al-Bukhārī (5484) and Muslim (1929) in the narration of ʿAdī: “for I fear it may have caught it only for itself.”
Allah the Exalted says: “So eat of what they catch for you” (Qur’an 5:4).
These texts show that if the hunting animal secures the prey for itself, its catch is unlawful unless one reaches it while it still has stable life and performs the prescribed slaughter; otherwise it falls under His saying: “while what a beast of prey has eaten – unless you [properly] slaughter it” (Qur’an 5:3).
Sharḥ al-Iqnāʿ states: “If the dog, or any other predator, sets off on its own and kills game, the game is not lawful, because releasing the hunting animal stands in the place of slaughter; therefore the deliberate act of release is a condition for the lawfulness of the hunt.”
9- His words, “and if it has not eaten from it, then eat it,” are supported by another wording in al-Bukhārī (5484) and Muslim (1929): “When you send your trained dogs and mention the name of Allah, then eat; but if the dog eats from it, do not eat, for I fear it may only have caught it for itself.”
The predator’s intention to hunt on behalf of its owner is a prerequisite for the permissibility of its catch, and this can only be inferred from its conduct. If it eats from the prey, we know that it did not intend the catch for the one who released it, but rather