After a series of accidents, hunting has been invited into the public debate in recent weeks. It even became a theme of the presidential campaign, with EELV candidate Yannick Jadot considering banning his practice during weekends and school holidays if elected. A proposal that echoes that put on the table by the collective “Un jour un chasseur”, created by the friends of Morgan Keane, this 25-year-old youngster killed by a bullet while he was chopping wood his home.
Thanks to their citizen petition, launched on the site of the Senate and which passed the milestone of 100,000 signatures, they obtained the creation of a mission which will examine “the question of hunting safety”. Received this Tuesday by parliamentarians, they will explain to them the measures they defend, in particular that of the ban on hunting on Wednesday and Sunday. A measure that arouses strong and many reactions, especially among our readers.
“Every time people lose their lives”
In a recent Ifop poll for the JDD, 69% of French people said they were in favor of a ban on weekends and during school holidays. Some would even go further, advocating a total ban to avoid any fatal accident. Michelle is one of them, having experienced a personal tragedy several years ago. “Thirty-seven years ago my dad was killed while hunting, he was 53 years old. At the time, no judgment, no prison sentence… Since each opening of the hunt I have great apprehension because unfortunately each time there are people who lose their lives and, in addition, just because of one person. who will kill animals, ”she laments bitterly.
These hunting accidents, which are regularly in the news, have widened the gap between the French on this issue. Particularly when the victim was a stranger to the hunting trip. “These accidents are dramatic. I apologize because it is my role. But there are very few accidents in a year, they are very rare with non-hunters. We know that accidents can happen, zero risk does not exist. In twenty years, we have divided by four all accidents, whether fatal or bodily “, reacted in early November the president of the National Federation of Hunters, Willy Schraen.
Unprecedented awareness raising operation #security to the #hunt OFB, Nov 19-21: 700 environmental inspectors deployed on all 🇨🇵, 300 operations, more than 2,500 hunters made aware of security issues, the OFB’s first concern in conjunction with hunter federations pic.twitter.com/VEqfgsFTOd
– French Biodiversity Office (@OFBiodiversite) December 1, 2021
A trend confirmed at the end of last month by the French Biodiversity Office (OFB) in its annual report. According to the public establishment, there was 80 hunting accidents in total during the 2020/2021 season, including 7 fatalities, compared to 39 fatalities the previous season. An accidentology, which in more than 85% of cases concerns hunters, has been “constantly decreasing” for more than twenty years, underlines the OFB. And to specify that “the non-respect of the safety rules remains the first cause of hunting accidents”.
“Are we going to ban the car because it kills?” “
The association “One day a hunter” estimates for its part, that many of them are not declared. The one Henri lived with his small family made him clearly fall into the camp of “for” the ban. Some time ago, he came close to the drama. He had stopped so his wife could breastfeed their baby. Four or five minutes after seeing a hunter, “the car door on my wife’s side was riddled with bullets. Luckily, it was only the car that was hit. The hunter was in tears but the damage was done, ”he recalls, chilled by this incident. One more for the activists to stop hunting.
But for those who roam the woods on weekends in fluorescent vests, this “hobby” is much less dangerous than other activities. “Remember that there are more accidents, deaths, in disciplines that no one questions such as skiing, drowning in private swimming pools, even car accidents, domestic accidents … ban the car because it kills? “Asks Thibault, a hunter for whom, if days without hunting were to be decreed, it would be akin to” a liberticidal measure in contradiction with our constitution and its fundamental texts “.
Freedom to hike versus freedom to hunt
A notion of freedom on which the pros and anti-hunters strongly oppose. For Danielle, the end of the hunt on Wednesday and Sunday “would be a good start! “. “For a small percentage of hunters who poison our forests, how many people are deprived of nature walks? », She asks. An idea of sharing paths and forests between their different users that comes up regularly.
Catherine often goes for a walk in the Bois de Boissy in Taverny, in the Val-d’Oise. One day she found herself on a busy pedestrian path, just near private fields where a hunting party was taking place. “Our presence and that of our dogs disturbed them and they threatened us” to kill a dog if we did not get out of there quickly “. I felt deeply helpless and threatened because even if they were in private land, their guns were aimed at us, who were walking on a path accessible to all, ”she says. Since then, this grandmother has avoided this place with her grandchildren.
Régine, she has a house in the middle of the fields and every Sunday from the opening of the hunt “it’s anguish, the hunters are all around me, they frighten my dogs and horses with their shots”. To protect herself, she put up signs around her house, asking them to go further. “Most of them respect but some taunt us. It’s like everywhere there are good and bad ”, continues the one who denies being opposed on principle.
Tensions regretted by many followers of the hunt, which has a little less than a million practitioners in France. Pierre, a 36-year-old farmer, is one of them. Regular hiker, occasional fisherman, he is “firmly attached to all these practices”. Like many others, he goes hunting on Sundays, during the week he works “like many French people”. “Where I live, hunters and walkers respect each other and sometimes even merge. The neorurals must also get used to the traditions of the countryside, and respect private property, all the woods and all the roads are not public, ”he recalls.
Most forests, “private spaces”
And this is one of the arguments that comes up regularly to defend their right to hunt. Why ban when hunters are mostly on private land. “I am lucky to have my forest and to keep several hunting grounds. I tolerate the passage of people on my land, I pay land and forest taxes every year, no one asks my opinion to return home. Unfortunately, more and more people are coming to steal wood, fruit and mushrooms. Nature does not belong to everyone, between 75 and 85% of forests are private in our country, 100% of agricultural land are private too, ”recalls Flavien, who would prefer people to get along instead of banning.
“Most state-owned forests are not shot on Wednesdays and Sundays. Then, we talk about a maximum of 30 days a year out of 365… It’s insignificant, ”Josselin says. Emeline, a huntress, also considers it “disproportionate” to ban Wednesdays and Sundays. But, tired of the sterile divide, she says she is in favor, on a case-by-case basis and depending on the local context, to prohibit hunting “on a Sunday afternoon in an environment which would be for example very touristy and frequented, and which would pose challenges. cohabitation difficulties see security problems ”. She would also like to change the image of hunters.
The regulation of game (sometimes from breeding)
Just like Christian, a hunter since he was 16. Now 59 years old, this organic wine-grower hunts on the beaten path and maintains his territory “which benefits everyone”. “The densities of big game are such that the pressure on forests and especially crops becomes unbearable for farmers. Big game populations pose other problems, in particular the danger on the roads. Accidents are numerous and are sometimes fatal. But we talk less, “regrets the one who has just hung up his apron as mayor of a commune in Hautes Corbières. In France, there are thus 40,000 collisions each year between wild animals and cars.
A regulatory role in which another Christian no longer recognizes himself. At 74 years old, this Provençal remembers that when he got his hunting license at the age of 16, “when a wild boar was killed, it was an event”. “Today a beaten kills 100 to 150 in season, while the surfaces of agricultural and cultivated land, the woods have decreased dramatically. Today there is nothing traditional about hunting. Wild boars, stags, roe deer, partridges, pheasants and others are only products of breeding for commercial purposes. Most hunters are city dwellers. We hunt wild boar and deer with weapons of war that have ranges of several kilometers, ”he says.
Raising game for hunting purposes is indeed a reality in France. Each year, the producer sector raises around 14 million pheasants, 5 million partridges and 100,000 wild rabbits, all intended to be released into the wild, whether in metropolitan France or in the rest of Europe. “For several years we have been taken for idiots when talking about hunting as a regulation. The truth is, a majority of hunters only want to do live target shooting. The proof is that a good number of animals killed during these massacres are farm animals, ”concludes Alain.
Two visions of the hunt are therefore opposed, and seem irreconcilable. A divisive debate that will not fail to be fueled over the coming months by the positions of the presidential candidates.