The importance of hunting in these grounds reaches back to their very foundation in1747.
Due to its natural propensities as a forested area with strong game potential, the royal household found this place to be especially rich for hunting and leisure and conferring it with a very noble ambience that is still today preserved and continued.
The practice of hunting has been bound up with human nature ever since pre-historic times before evolving into an activity whether essential to human survival or at least to complementing the prevailing diet and then finally changing into a recreation and leisure activity associated with a taste for close contact with nature and the management of animal species.
Proving today a significantly important economic activity and popular across the social strata, there were times when hunting was restricted to the upper classes – the aristocracy and royalty who retained extensive hunting grounds and game reserves for their own exclusive usage.
Hunting thus became a symbol of power on the one hand and with this practice of defeating physically more powerful animals constituting a means of physical preparation for military combat on the other hand.
During the reign of João V, the monarch who had the Convent built and laid out the Hunting Grounds of Mafra, there was a sharp uptake in the national manufacture of firearms and hunting guns in a practice that continued during the reign of his son José I.
As these hunting weapons gradually became distinct to weapons of war, they became subject to ornamentation and reflecting both the economic power and the tastes of its owner.
Mafra, due to its proximity to the Court in Lisbon, provided, along with Salvaterra de Magos, a favoured site for hunting by all the kings and queens in the Houses of Bragança, in particular João V and José I, as well as Maria I and João VI, Pedro II, Fernando, Luís and Carlos.
The tradition was hunting by beating or on horseback with the shooting taking place at short distances with the prey in movement.