"Billebaude": new thought-provoking, beautiful French book/magazine on hunting

Pine Marten

Well-Known Member
For anyone here who reads French, I thought I’d draw your attention to “Billebaude”, a fantastic new book-magazine (apparently known as a “mook”) published in France by Glénat. I received a copy of the first edition last week and have been reading through it over the weekend. It is beautifully produced, illustrated with specially produced artwork and photography, featuring articles by and about chefs, philosophers, writers, scientists, all around the topic of hunting.

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The editor’s plan is that each edition should be built around a hunting-related theme, and for the first one this is venison/game meat, but you won’t find any recipes in here, or “how to” articles. “Billebaude” is unashamedly high-brow, and all the more enjoyable for it. I suppose it’s similar in concept to “Waterlog” in the UK, but as far as I’m aware there is nothing approaching this in Britain with regards to hunting. I daresay there is such a publication in the US, but I don’t know it.

Here is a selection of topics in this first edition:

  • An interview with American author Jim Harrison
  • An article on the widespread eating of bushmeat in West Africa
  • XVIIIth century zoomorphic tableware for a time when new culinary techniques meant that for the first time, meat was presented in forms that bore no resemblance to the animal it came from and diners weren’t quite comfortable with that yet
  • The philosophy behind vegetarianism and its’ history
  • An article by a philosopher entitled “Hunting as a reasoned practice of cruelty”
  • A creative piece on prehistoric hunting

It’s eclectic, doesn’t shy away from anything, beautifully illustrated and written, and worthy of success. If you read French, order a copy now!
 
Seriously, it sounds like an interesting publication; but I doubt that my remnant of O-level French would cope with the arguments philosophical, and other grown-up stuff of that sort.
 
The Éditer must speak Englués to have pinched my idea for is not this site littered with suggestions from K for a "hunting with rifle magazine based on Waterlog"?

The only problem I foresee is my limited French that comprises but 6 words: En grand beer si vous plaie!

K
 
This joke works better in English:
Pourquoi mange M. Hollande un seul oeuf pour le petit déjeuner?
Parce-qu'en France, un oeuf suffit!
 
I thought I’d have a look at what’s behind this publication. It turns out that it’s a joint venture between Editions Glénat, which is just a publishing house, and the “Maison de la Nature et de la Chasse”, which is a privately-run foundation that runs a museum in Paris, an estate that serves as a “living museum” and is somehow involved in the running of the Chateau de Chambord. Items from the museum collections feature heavily in the publication’s illustrations. It has something akin to a charitable status which enables it to receive donations and legacies, but it’s not a state-run thing, so it’s certainly not heavily-subsidised or anything like that.

The reason for which I looked into this was because I was trying to work out whether “Billebaude” was supposed to be a profit-making venture, and it appears to be so, even though I would think that the target market is reasonably small, and they only plan to publish it twice a year at €25 a copy. On the other hand, I think it has crossover appeal with artistic, literary, philosophical and scientific publications. So all that says to me that there’s no particular reason why you wouldn’t try and do something similar in the UK. You probably wouldn’t make a fortune, but the publication could at least perhaps pay for itself.

So bearing in mind that “Billebaude” refers to a somewhat haphazard mode of hunting, essentially walking about to see what you can find with no particular plan in mind, and that this reflects the eclectic nature of the publication, what would you call the English language version?
 
Not 100% what I had in mind for a UK version as net cast too wide and should be restricted to what one may cosine to the pot with the grooved bore.

As for a title you’d be hard pressed to beat:

Walnut & Cordite
(A Miscellany of Rambles with Rifle & Knapsack)

Suitably contemporary don’t you think!

Cheers

K
 
In the language which we use among oureslves to describe these activities, do we actually hunt with rifles in this country?
I don't think I've ever described anything I do with gun or rifle as hunting.

Anyhow, is la chasse a la billebaude roughly what we'd call rough-shooting?
 
Its how I would wish to promote my passion and be judged even if it does buck the trend and accepted use of the word "to hunt" in this Country. But then conformity has never been my strong point!

K
 
It is perhaps unfortunate that we lack in English English use a word meaning what to hunt, chasser and jagen mean in American, Fr and Ger respectively. Or perhaps it gives English English a richness these other lack.

Anyhow, as a part-time nonconformist myself, given a choice between not conforming to the American/Continental usage and not conforming with the English useage, I would always choose not to conform to the former: but then as a half-German, I am perhaps biased.
 
In the language which we use among oureslves to describe these activities, do we actually hunt with rifles in this country?
I don't think I've ever described anything I do with gun or rifle as hunting.

Anyhow, is la chasse a la billebaude roughly what we'd call rough-shooting?

I'm just using the term generically to denote the process of observing, approaching or ambushing that leads to the capture and/or killing of a wild animal, devoid of its' cultural context. Of course, it doesn't really make sense without a historical or legal context, but I just use it as a technical term. I suppose I include in that driven shooting of reared game, although that doesn't satisfy all the criteria, but it's technically a form of hunting. I'd even say that personally, I consider that fishing is just hunting fish. I think that the distinction is partly artificial and based on the fact that they're cold, slimy, silent and just very alien to us, attracting less empathy than our furry quarry.

You're right that "chasse à la billebaude" mostly refers to what we call rough-shooting, with similar connotations of individual action. What there isn't really is the distinction between different sorts of game, which I believe is a UK-specific distinction (like "coarse" and "game" fishing) which we've partly inherited from the Normans. Such legal distinctions were abolished in France at the start of the Revolution. I don't know about Germany, I'd imagine that it depends to an extent in which Land you're in.

It's worth noting that "billebaude" has acquired a nostalgic flavour now as since WW2, mostly because if changes in agricultural practices and the introduction of myxomatosis, the main form of hunting in France has switched from rough shooting for small game to collective drives for big game. So it refers to the ubiquitous cross-cultural Golden Age when everything was better. Except for all the stuff that was awful.
 
My 'problem' with the term stalking, while helpful in conveying a key element of Woodcraft (there I go again off UK piste), is it does not instantly transport me to an autumnal woodland setting with rifle in hand and the choked bark of a grey squirrel moving through a partially mist-shrouded canopy of chestnut. The reason for this is simple: My passion for both the outdoors and sporting rifles was wholly forged in the sepia matured pages of vintage US hunting & gun magazines.

Thereafter an occasional dip into the UK Shooting Times of the 60's left me untouched and with zero desire to own a shotgun as frankly all seemed as tired and grey as the monochrome page it was printed upon. In fact the only memorable article I recall was one recounting shooting squirrel with a Webley air rifle.

Hunting with a rifle will do for me then please. Indeed to make the point albeit in a somewhat obtuse manner, to this day I pepper my FAC renewal statements with such.

Cheers

K
 
Woodcraft is perhaps a bit off the UK piste, but woodcrafty stuff has been going on in the UK for some time, perhaps most strikingly with the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift in the early 1920s. Fascinating.

I think you have it there, though - sporting rifles. One calls to mind the 1960s books of Henry Tegner MA - namely 'The Sporting Rifle and its Use in Britain', and 'Game for the Sporting Rifle': 'The Sporting Rifle' by 'The Ruffle' of 1951: Burrard's 'Notes on the Sporting Rifle' of 1920.

I think there is already something called 'Sporting Rifle' so perhaps 'Riflesport', quirky, succinct and made-up, would do?

Do the French not retain the idea of grand and petit gibier, as the Germans do Hoch- and Niederwild? Bizarrely, in Germany Sportschiessen or 'sportshooting' means 'target shooting': could things get any more confusing for a poor half-breed?
 
Do the French not retain the idea of grand and petit gibier, as the Germans do Hoch- and Niederwild? Bizarrely, in Germany Sportschiessen or 'sportshooting' means 'target shooting': could things get any more confusing for a poor half-breed?

Eine gute Frage, aber meine Meinung nach... "Hoch"/"Nieder" have judgemental overtones as do "high"/"low" in English, but then these prefixes share the same roots. However in French, "grand"/"petit" gibier juste relate to size: big animals and little ones. As far as I know, only in the hunting/"vènerie" (with horses and hounds, in the now "English" sense) lexicon are these meanings retained. As I said, it's a Norman/mediaeval thing.
 
Pump:

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I bought it for £18.95 on Amazon.co.uk including P&P. Inside was a form to subscribe, which I would have done but they only accept DDs from French accounts, and it's €25 a copy. Fools.
 
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