In recent weeks France has seen much publicity about la chasse (“the hunt”), after a young man of 25 years old was shot dead while chopping firewood near his house in Lot, in the country’s south-west, on 2 December. His killer caught sight of a “dark mass” and fired, thinking he would hit a wild boar. Instead, his over-eager trigger finger took the total of human deaths at the hands of chasseurs to 11 for 2020.
According to figures from the French National Office for Hunting and Wild Animals just after his death, more than 420 people have died at the hands of hunters so far this century. That office now no longer has an independent existence. Since the start of this year, the department has been merged into a new French Office for Biodiversity. The new title is just one of the ways in which President Emmanuel Macron has played to the gallery of the hunting community since being elected.
La chasse is big in France, and its followers are generally on the Right of the political spectrum and they assume that they can act as they like across the countryside. Visit the media presence created by friends of Morgan Keane, the December 2020 victim, to get a flavour of the anger this can stir up.
