BBC article on hunting in France

Good morning everyone.

I thought some of you may find this report interesting:

[h=1]How France is falling out of love with hunting[/h]
It's an honest enough attempt at a report on the waning popularity of hunting in France, if a bit simplistic. But then it's a complex topic especially for the vast majority of people who know nothing about it.
 
Interesting report. I imagine that France like Sweden do's not have the rural population it had 50+ years ago when France had 2 million hunters. Sweden is the same with a dwindling rural population. Just looking at where i live there are only old people left and in 20 years there will be very few living full time around here. There are no small working farms around here any more the last one got rid of all there cattle last year as they retired.
Cost is a problem what with having to take the hunting exam and kitting your self out. When i first moved here 14 years ago hunting hares and roe with a dog was very popular but only old men did it. Not being a youngster myself, i was often the youngest when invited out hunting by a hunting team. Its no surprise young people were put of coming into hunting. How many youngsters want to sit out in the forest with a boring bunch of old farts.
But there is a rise in the numbers of hunter and this is down, i think to the rise in boar numbers. Plus a lot more women are getting into hunting.
 
In front of the Senate, the upper house of the French parliament, where a few dozen protesters are chanting "No hunting, no hunting!" I meet François Darlot, president of France Without Hunting. [Darlot says...] "The main reason for the decline is that our values have changed. We have so much more sensibility now when it comes to the animal world."

A different sensibility, perhaps, and a different attitude too to demanding others should lose long-standing rights.

It's admittedly not in the tenor of this report, which is indeed quite balanced in its sotto voce disdain for all involved, but pigs will surely fly before a BBC reporter plucks up the courage to put it to an anti that their insistence on imposing their own sensibilities at the expense of others' freedoms is both intolerant and intolerable.
 
There are similar problems to elsewhere regarding rural population dynamics, but the really big one is the collapse of small game populations and in particular rabbits due to intensive agriculture and myxomatosis (and more recently VHD). So most hunting now takes the form of driven large game. There are problems with cost, accessibility, a certain amount of insularity and some of the older guard making newcomers or "outsiders" feel unwelcome, so they vote with their feet. The result of all of this though is that the casual hunters are vanishing. People who paid their annual fee, turned up on opening day when the sun was still out and filled the freezer with cheap meat, without really giving it much more though that than. Actually, there are areas of hunting that are attracting newcomers such as stalking (still a minority pursuit in much of France, the culture is of collective hunting), wildfowling, mountain game, bowhunting. Essentially newcomers are looking for a more authentic form of hunting, wild game, challenge, they're generally very environmentally aware, and very passionate. But in areas that either have nothing like that to offer or refuse to accommodate it, they're in trouble, often of a very financial kind as they have to compensate farmers for damage done to crops by boar for instance. And they pass on the cost to a dwindling number of hunters who need to kill more and more big game. They can see the cliff-face...

I think (and it's not just me) that in future, there will be fewer hunters, but they will be more committed, more deeply involved, certainly more environmentally-minded. But for the casual hunter who just likes to potter about early season because that's what everyone else does and it's a cheap way of filling the freezer, things aren't looking good.

So there you go, it's not all bad news. It's just going through change.
 
Maybe I have been reading American articles for too long.....but I still thought the author missed no chance to take subtle stabs on hunters (i.e. " and the clothes that make you look like you've walked in from a war zone....) and use opinion/hearsay rather than facts. Perhaps not an overt anti-hunting article but I found it hard to read that as balanced.
 
Maybe I have been reading American articles for too long.....but I still thought the author missed no chance to take subtle stabs on hunters (i.e. " and the clothes that make you look like you've walked in from a war zone....) and use opinion/hearsay rather than facts. Perhaps not an overt anti-hunting article but I found it hard to read that as balanced.
The BBC dont do balanced Cootmeurer.
 
I'm surprised at the drop in shooters in France. I travel there frequently as my parents have a property near Le Mans. In season, every block of fields you pass has a group of Orange camo clad chaps walking up game.
In our village we back onto fields and it's not uncommon to see Roe, Boar and hares in abundance. Not too many rabbits, pigeons or crows which is surprising.
Its a running joke with the family on the 4 hour drive home as it's pretty much guaranteed I'll see a roe or a muntjac in a field as we pass on the Péage!

ive got my European firearm passport and need to read more into the hunting laws over there in our region, as I could easily get permission on hundreds of acres especially for boar!
 
No you couldn't, not easily, as the permission is niot generally the landowner's or occupier's to give away... If you're interested I'm more than happy to explain.
 
I think the comments on agriculture are right. Wildlife and small game are dependent upon farming that is helpful. I can too see the objections rolling in from anti-hunters that public money to help wildlife should not be there for hunters to enjoy. We hunters have to think on our feet and motivate ourselves to be more creative(but certainly truthful) in our arguments. Generally I think hunting can be a force for good in the countryside in terms of management, knowledge and active involvement. Without that care and attention, wildlife will all but dwindle, the whole lot of it. Politically hunters need to stop being tot careful in discussing about what we do in public , and go out and actively debate it publicly being proponents. When challenged, a lot of misguided opinion simply melts and drains away. Anti-hunting left unchallenged, because we are not great in numbers or are silent, can easily gain a foothold with a majority of people who are indifferent and certainly ignorant. The challenge is to fight for it by being vocal. Make it a known passion.

My main concern in the UK is that hunting in general needs to have a broader base, and encourage wider participation. It also needs to overcome images of elitism as well. And where animals are treated like clay targets, we need to self regulate and review the situation.
 
Pine Martin- I'm very keen to know what the rules are, there's an English chap near our village that owns quite a few hundred acres and fishing lakes. He had said a few times to bring the toys over but the one time I checked in advance to make sure t was still ok, we were out of season apparently and as the Chasse Guard lives next door he said not that time.

Some clarification ion would be great, thanks.

Dan.
 
Pine Martin- I'm very keen to know what the rules are, there's an English chap near our village that owns quite a few hundred acres and fishing lakes. He had said a few times to bring the toys over but the one time I checked in advance to make sure t was still ok, we were out of season apparently and as the Chasse Guard lives next door he said not that time.

Some clarification ion would be great, thanks.

Dan.

Right, first thing: you cannot do any hunting whatsoever in France without a hunting licence/Permis de Chasser. It's a criminal offence. However, you can easily obtain a visitor's licence for the departement you're in for 3 or 9 days at a time, and I believe you can obtain three such licences a season. For this you need the details of your FAC which counts as your UK hunting license. You can generally do this online. I've done it twice this year. You will need insurance. If you're a BASC member, you're covered.

Now that's just like your fishing license, it gives you the right to hunt, but no access to hunting. It's the first hoop. And as with the UK, there are hunting seasons to be respected whether you're on public or private land. They can often vary from one region to another, and there will pretty much always be a "Plan de chasse" which is really a cull plan, with quotas for age, sex, species and so on. Again this changes from one area to another. Your local Guarde Chasse can help! These quotas are set by officials, not by private landowners. So your friend, even if he does have the hunting rights on his property, can't decide for example to wipe out all the deer. It's not up to him because wild animals belong to no-one until they are killed.

Finally, your friend may very well not own the sporting rights, or at least not exclusively. So he may well have the right to hunt on his land, probably as part of the local association (and in the North it's generally private), but probably not just for himself. So he may not be able to legally invite you.

Simplest solution is to ask at the local Mairie. They'll know how the land is divvied up. If he's a resident there, he needs to obtain a full Permis de Chasser. It's easy enough, a practical exam which is really about safety, and a multiple choice test on legislation, species, safety and so on. If you can do DSC1, you can do the Examen du Permis de Chasser.
 
Thanks Piney,

we we get on well with the local Mairie, next time we've had him on the calvados one evening I'll ask him about it some more. What about taking a rimmie over for some plinking in the garden? Over 2acres by the way and surrounded by fields etc.

Can I take one over on a currently closed ticket? They are on my European firearms passport already.
 
In practice I don't think anyone will bug you about some plinking. I should say that for the past two or three years, it has been a legal requirement to declare possession of a .22LR. This is widely flaunted, but it is the law. Ah, and it's generally not allowed for hunting purposes. Or air rifles. French rabbits like to be shot with a 9.3.

By "closed ticket" do you mean that your UK FAC isn't open? In which case it's irrelevant. It has no authority in France, any more than a Permis de Chasser does in the UK. The EFP does, and your temporary Permis de Chasser. Conditions as they exist in the UK don't exist in France. You have a licence to buy guns for hunting and so long as you operate within the law, you can buy anything you like. If you want to use a .404 Gibbs for roe, you can.
 
Yes I've read up about the laws on hunting with air rifles. The few local gun shops we have only have poor springers so I assumed they stuck to bullets. As for French rabbits? I thought they were extinct? It's unbelievable the amount of large tasty game that we see around but the total lack of rabbits anywhere!
so when you take your firearms over' (assuming you do?) do they ask for a permis de chasse at the border? If I took it over for plinking am I going to get sent away at Folkestone? (I know it sounds sad, but trust me when the weathers ***** and you've nothing but friends reruns for entertainment! You start thinking about your guns!)
 
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