which is why it is important to understand the location/usage of the property and its surroundings… particularly its access and boundaries … and its neighbours … before buying !!!
It might well be “bonkers” where you are… but in many areas the chasse performs important conservation work. 
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I appreciate you will defend French life till your dying day but the hunting deaths and accidents that occur weekly here tell a different story. 
I do not defend any baddies… but I do know a lot of good-guys… and from my personal experiences the latter outweigh the former…
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Probably a No No
We have an ancient chemin rurale which passes in front of the house and goes through to the woods - we were told it is not in use (and never had been in the time of the previous owners) and I think that is due to the fact that they (and possibly those before them) let it become so overgrown that it is impassable … and it will stay that way.
Whilst I hate the hunt, (I have in the past demonstrated long and loud against hunting and for animal rights), I have chosen to live here in the Dordogne forest, and its not my place to try to change what is essentially a tradition. We can tell when they are in the area both on a Sunday when they roar round in the vans with dogs baying and on a Thursday afternoon I often hear someone exercising the dogs so I keep a close watch, and if necessary stay indoors. When we first came here I saw them trample over our land and asked them not to come out of the woods into the meadow, (which they have respected ever since),and Ive warned them that the electric poultry netting will give the dogs a big shock if they touch it.
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Tim, where there are wannabe nobility with firearms you will always have accidents. It is the same all over where there are hunts, in Germany, Czech Rep and more besides. The fact of the matter is the hunt serves a conservational role in the environment. I appreciate you will find a number of drunkard gunslingers about but in general, the serious and sensible ones weed those out that dont abide by the codex.
Thank you all for your lively comments and words of warning. We are looking for a permanent home in rural France for the quiet and serenity. I suspect that wherever we end up ‘la chasse’ will be in the area. The comments here will certainly introduce a healthy chunk of caution into our rush to buy. Thank you all again.
(special thanks to JJones for the cadastral link).
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I think there is a massive difference from place to place. We live in what is effectively a fairly prosperous part of France and the majority of the inhabitants are fairly middle class. When the local chasse has done a big organised hunt the president came round in person to alert me and suggest that I might want to keep my horses in as he thought it would upset them. He told me exactly where the nearest marksmen were going to be placed and at what distance from my boundary and apologised for it being close but explained that one particular group of deer were savaging the neighbouring farmer’s vines.
In ten years of riding and walking around our nearest woods, I have only ever met nice, polite sensible hunters who seem totally aware of the need for vigilance.
(Mind you having a large ridgeback who I always explain ‘is bred to chase lions’ always gets me some kudos…!!)
Equally we have lived in other places and had arsy hunters trampling through the fields and parking on the drive.
Personally, given there is so much variation on a very local level, if I found the perfect rural property, I’d be inclined to go and meet the local chasse and try to ascertain whether they were responsible conservationists or maddened gunslingers…
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the link is great… but always chat with the Mairie (in wherever you find a property you like) as they know the owners of the land, the history, what is up-and-coming etc etc… and are a font of knowledge. They are well used to would-be buyers (of all nationalities) asking pertinent questions… and weird ones as well… 
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We try to keep the weird under control. Thank you Stella. We shall certainly talk to the Mairie.
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A little “weird” is ok… but not tooooo much…
Agree, probably best to walk away. Even if it turns out to be a “chemin rural” or chemin d’exploitation" which should be kept up by the local commune you would probably find that there is not much money in the kitty for that type of maintenance. We are at the end of such a road and with the heavy rains in recent years we have some fairly dramatic potholes which we try to restore ourselves. The mayor promises, with a smile, that something will be done - we’ve been discussing the latest damage for a year now.
Also, someone will own the woodland and probably be taking wood out of it in winter with tractor and heavy trailer - that really churns up the surface.
If your property has a “servitude” across someone else’s land, however well you get on with the current neighbours, there is not certainty that won’t change over the years - and we are always the “incomers” (same with Parisians) and not everyone is welcoming.
Hunters - there are two types - well organised occasional “battues” where they all wear yellow gilets and it’s very controlled, with beaters - usually they are after a specific animal. Then there are the casual hunters over the weekend and sometimes mid week afternoons from mid September through to March. Typically they will have several dogs, sometimes hunting horns. Shooting is pretty random - if there are several shots immediately after each other I think great the animal has got away! As most hunt dogs are kept caged for much of the time, they can be pretty unruly and noisy once out. Because the hunt dogs are baying up in the woodland, we have a rescue mutt who thinks it’s his duty to be out there yelling with them. Also, we suddenly realised some years back we had a young bitch likely to come into heat, just as the hunt season was starting! She very quickly got “done”. We are always careful to keep a neutral stance where our local hunters are concerned, but I had no hesitation in yelling at them in the early days to get their dogs off our land and away from our two dogs. Since then, we’ve had no problems.
Also, woodland round here is a magnet for guys on very noisy bikes who are “off-roading”. We’re fortunate that the woodland round us is that bit further away, but I wouldn’t want bikes going past my house. Especially as they favour Sundays when the rest of us in the commune are encouraged not to use noisy gardening tools! If buying a rural property, always make a point of visiting it over Saturday and Sunday mid/late afternoons - that will tell you just how noisy the quiet of the French countryside can be!
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I don’t think you can class all hunters as wannabee nobility. Like Cat said, it is different area to area. My neighbour hunts, he’s a technician working for SAUR and he doesn’t have much good to say about the upper echelons of society.
The most enthusiastic hunter I ever encountered was a guy I met socially. He worked for a slot machine company, delivering and servicing baby-foot tables and suchlike, so again absolutely no aspirations to be classed as nobility. The conversation got onto hunting and the next couple of hours were spent with him telling me hunting tales and showing me hundreds if not thousands of photos on his phone, of animals he had hunted and killed, and the various stages of them being cut up, cooked and eaten. Hunting was his great passion in life and listening him to him talk I think I got a new insight into how hunters see things, or at least that particular hunter. I did tell him that I was very ambivalent and he didn’t find that strange, but he put it down to not being part of the countryside and not understanding what hunting is about. Which I suppose is true to a large extent. It is a whole different mindset. And I guess a lot of mindsets do seem bonkers to people who don’t share them.
That wouldn’t, of course, apply to the estate agents in the Charente who failed to let the others know that they had sold the property and we turned up from UK to view only to find someone in residence!
I totally agree Anna. There is no nobility in our village, but there are hunters. It is a rural tradition.
There used to be a Welsh Miners Hunt and many hunters on foot on upland land.
No nobility there, even back in the good old days in UK.
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Hi Anna, Jane. I dont class all hunters as such. I grew up on a farm and i have a German hunting and firearms licence so i was in the melee of the hunting fraternity and i can assure you i do not class all as such. Unfortunately the accidents i have seen or heard about were all caused by the irresponsibility and complacency of the wannabe’s ie doctors, CEO’s bank managers and the like. These are the wannabe nobility i refer too (maybe not explicitly described) I know from many pleasurable encounters in numerous countries on hunts, there are many many more sensible and dedicated hunters than idiots.
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It is not the duty or obligation of an agent to inform all other companies that a property has been sold. It is of course the duty of the property owner who signed the original mandates to take the property off the market with the other agents.
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I actually have no great problem with hunting, it is part of french rural life and I chose to live here. But I’d love to know what you think this important conservation work is? I’ve heard this time and time again, but when I try to understand what this actually means I’ve never had a environmentally sound answer beyond keeping a few paths clear (off-set by the paths they churn up with their quads…). If they didn’t feed the game so much the population would most likely revert to an acceptable level, or one that could be dealt with a cull once a year.
In our three year house hunt we encountered maybe 50 immobiliers. 40 were pretty useless, and 10 were wonderful. And we were always polite, courteous and kept them informed. Majority rules…
When i was house hunting i had the pleasure of dealing with 2 French estate agents and 1 english agent. The French ones were absolutely fantastic to work with but the english one was a total disgrace. 6 emails and no answer forthcoming. 1 email to the french one and numerous emails retour with more information than was in the first instance required. I bought through 1 of the french agents.100% satisfaction.