Charlie eats Chocapic in the back of the pickup. “On hunting days, it’s without milk”, says the 5-year-old boy, one hand in the plastic box. This January 7, in the forest of Orléans (Loiret), like every weekend since his birth, he follows the hunting party led by his family. Two or three years ago, in Fontainebleau, a group of anti-hunting activists arrested him with other children. “Your parents are murderers” they told them. There, Philippe Prioux, father of Charlie and son of Pierre-François Prioux, the president of the Société de vénerie, got off his horse. “Adults, yes, but we don’t touch children”, he yelled at them.
Huntsmen and anti-hunting activists have hundreds of stories like this. “One day, there will be a drama”, launched prosecutor Marie Lawrysz to the president of the Compiègne court on December 2, 2022. At the helm, two hunters accused of hitting Keely Fischer’s head against a tree before stealing her GoPro. The 21-year-old knows one of her attackers. He took her on hunting trips when she was a child. Then Keely Fischer changed tack by joining the Abolissons la vénerie collective today (AVA). The number one enemy of huntsmen. For five years, these two camps have been waging a sometimes violent war of attrition. Without thanks.
Rituals and codified outfits
It’s a strange time for French hunting, which has existed since François Ier. Considered anachronistic, cruel, aristocratic, it has never been practiced so much: there are 10,000 hunters divided into 394 crews (compared to 218 in 1914) and 100,000 followers. It lives both its hour of glory and reprieve. “France is one of the six countries in the world that authorize this archaic hunt”, recalled a column entitled “Hunting sows chaos and terror, we demand its abolition”, published on Lemonde.fr, January 8.
This traditional hunt, which consists of tracking down a wild animal with a pack of dogs, almost no longer exists beyond our borders. Belgium abolished it in 1995, Scotland in 2002. England and Wales replaced it with decoy hunting during which dogs chase an artificial fox scent. In Ireland, the United States, Canada or Australia, only foxes or coyotes are tracked, but without the rituals and codified outfits of French huntsmen.
France is finally “blackberry” to follow the example of its European neighbors, wants to believe Marine Tondelier, national secretary of Europe Ecologie-Les Verts. After the bill, finally withdrawn, for the abolition of bullfighting in November 2022, then measures on hunting considered very disappointing, the fight against hunting could mobilize beyond political labels. The environmental deputy of Gironde Nicolas Thierry has therefore planned to file, in the coming weeks, a new bill aimed solely at the abolition of hunting. He hopes to have it voted on in April, a few days after the end of the hunting season on March 31.
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