Sébastien Sarrau has not returned to hunting since. “And I already know that I won’t sleep for four days if one of my dogs touches a wild boar next time,” says this resident of the small town of Montesquiou, in Gers. The thirty-year-old is coming out of a particularly difficult month of December: he saw three of the eight members of his pack die. One of his friends experienced the same fate with five lost dogs, always “Bruno du Jura and Grand Gascon”.
“We are prepared to see them hit on contact but not to see them leave like that. It’s really awful,” the thirty-year-old continues, thinking back to the scene. “They scratch their throat, their head, they get all red and swollen. They mutilate themselves while trying to breathe because they are suffocating,” he explains, he who did not then know what was happening. The hunt had taken place four days before, without any warning signs being visible afterwards. Then the diagnosis came from the veterinarian: “Aujeszky’s disease”, euthanasia.
All the dogs of the two “hunting colleagues” died because of this pseudo-rabies contracted after contact with a wild boar. They are not the only ones: cases have also been reported in recent weeks in Essonne, Dordogne, Aube, Haute-Saône etc. Or almost everywhere in the territory. “There are still places spared like Gard and Hérault. We don’t really know why because these are departments where there are also a lot of wild boars,” explains Eva Faure, veterinarian at the National Hunters’ Federation.
She readily admits: “there are still many things we don’t know about this disease” whose virus was isolated at the beginning of the 20th century by a Hungarian who gave it his name. “But we know that humans are not threatened. We don’t die from it, there are no symptoms, it must be said,” insists the specialist. No, the targets are to be sought among pigs and therefore wild boars. For pig farms, the problem “has been eradicated thanks in particular to vaccination campaigns”. Except that this type of measurement can be very difficult to carry out with wild boars… Which are then transmitters.
“The probability of infection is not enormous”
How ? “This herpes virus is latent and emerges during stress or a drop in immunity,” explains Eva Faure. The probability of infection is not enormous but exists during nose-to-nose contact or near nerves. When, for example, dogs attack the carcass of the animal. » This is what happened for Sébastien Sarrau’s pack.
“It was in the middle of a hunt and the dogs had caught a young wild boar weighing 15 kg. It was less than five minutes by the time we arrived but they had bitten him and wouldn’t let go since it was a small one… They almost killed him and it was us who finished him off.” , continues the hunter, admitting to having thought at that moment of “Aujeszky’s disease”. “But it was difficult to arrive more quickly with the brambles and we pushed the pack away as quickly as possible. » Like the following week, when another of his dogs was again the first there. A few days later, he died of the same causes…
A vaccine exists but…
Since then, the Gersois has decided not to pick up his rifle again until his five remaining dogs have been vaccinated. Because a solution exists: “auskipra”. “It was submitted for pigs and we do not have a specific study on its effectiveness,” adds the veterinarian of the National Federation, who is currently conducting one. ” It is not finished. » So in the meantime, prevention counts. Almost everywhere, the message has gone out to avoid contact between wild boars and dogs as much as possible and not to give the latter meat from the former.
Not always successfully. “There needs to be more communication,” argues Sébastien Sarrau, who has received numerous calls “from colleagues throughout the department” since his mishap. “It’s impossible for there to be no contact, so the more we talk about it, the more likely we are to find vaccine solutions,” he hopes, still traumatized. “I think about it all the time. »