Perhaps it would be a good idea to lace hunters morning expressos or
late meals with huge doses of laxative thus keeping them away from
killing animals for sport.
What sort of person kills for sport?
Can you tell me?
On the contrary we have never had an issue or heard of anyone having any complaint, our hunt put up signs and seem very well behaved. I do avoid the areas they hunt in the season which is not really a problem for me.
I did have an issue with hunts in the UK I believed there were far better ways of controling foxes than chasing them with hounds, here I really think there is a case for deer and wild boar population to be controlled by hunting.
I have to agree with Brian here Nick, there are never any signs put up...and the Maire hunts himself....I am thinking lost cause here!!!!
Optimistic view Nick. When there is a mayor who farms, hunts and has lived in the village all of his life then how do you rate anybodys' chances? We, for instance, are on the borderline of three communes, two hundred metres away in one direction is another commune and double that in another direction another commune still. The hunters do not observe those boundaries, we can only go to our maire realistically. However, if the hunters are from another commune then unless we can establish that nothing one can do. That is how it is for most people. Signs saying chasse are one thing but chasse interdit is another, often nothing from what people are saying here. Gendarmes, prefects, all these people who administer and oversee law, often cannot be bothered unless there is good cause for complaint and look how many people who are shot get the equivalent of misadventure or accident verdicts.
Whilst may think they're a law unto themselves - there are laws that they have to obey. The main one being that they have to have permission of the farmer/landowner to hunt on his/her land and most importantly they have to put up "Chasse" signs on the boundary of their hunting fields. This happened here only after I'd complained to the Mairie - so i suggest you complain vociferously to the Marie and perhaps also persuade your neighbouring farmers not to allow the hunt on their land.
Thanks Mark, yes it was awful, such a lovely horse and we haven't got huge gardens or fields..our garden is about 1000 sq. metres and the front goes onto the road...so really no excuse to not see that beautiful animal. I do get scared when the hunting season is on. Luckily our dogs hate the shots and run into the house but you never know....I had never experienced anything like this and although I like the french traditions I do feel they should tighten up on the safety aspects of hunting, to me it seems they just do whatever they want regardless of anybody.
One of our fellow councillors was Master of the Hunt Carol, so he had to face smirks at the next parish meeting. I wish I had actually seen it and not just been told!
The anti-hunt movement is actually more the pro-animal lot. People who support SPA and so on, those who have had animals killed by hunters or thir dogs, but I gather there are enough of them to be quite an obstacle for those who think they own the countryside.
The idea came from a Berkshire hunt Brian.....they threw down loads of meat laced with laxative...another time they peppered the land where the hunt had their pre drinks.....hounds were not able to hunt that day.... didnt realise there was a big anti hunting movement here.... if so...then always worth getting them involved...
Carol has just reminded me of one that creased me up. We used to have so many hunt protestors back in that village in England, that we became blasé and mostly ignored them. Then one meet they came with hundreds of sausage rolls. They tipped them in front of the hounds and as hard as their handlers tried they wolfed the lot up. There was a laxative tablet for good measure in each but the main feature was the remains of a tray of beef curry from and Indian restaurant that had been put it the middle of each one, plugged in by the 'sausage'. Their was no way the hounds could do anything after that, then the next couple of days were even more miserable. It was cruel but since not one dog was too ill or died, the entirely hunt looked so wet!
Elisabeth, photographs. Dog fouling is an offence for which they can be heavily fined.
Contact the departmental hunting association and ask them to send somebody to see what is going on.
Get in touch with 'activists' against hunting who will come to 'occupy' your land and a couple of journos. Some people did that near here a few years back and it is still talked about. The manners in that commune have improved no end.
Film them....get as many friends around as you can in 4 x 4s...honking their horns continually...play loud, loud music and clearly show them you are videoing them....you are not sadly going to win by fair means....I would be inclined to throw meat around the area where the dogs are and pepper it. Wont hurt them but they wont be in a hunting mood after that. If you do nothing, they will not only carry on but will take more and more liberties.
We live in Brittany and have hunters that come from the next commune they arrive in vans unload their dogs who use our lawn as their toilet and then up to the woods that back onto our property. We have fully fenced our land with stock netting and barbed wire. If they shoot something on our land which they are not allowed to do as the notices quite clearly say they lift the wire with force and post a dog into the field. We have had more than several run ins with them. They told us to move our sheep off our land for saftey!!
We have threatened rounding up their loose dogs on our land and reporting them only to be told you do that we will shoot your horses. All our cats and dogs have to be rounded up and locked away for their own saftey.
Loud music did help but they had the nerve to ask us to turn it down. We have had the head of the local chasse out but have been told as they are on private land and have been given permission by the owner there is nothing that can be done. We have photographic evidence of them close to the property because if they were 150m away we would not be able to see them. They run around with loaded shotguns not in contro lof their dogs doing as they wish. Our heavy in lamb ewes were chased and that time my husband chased the dogs out of the field using our 4x4 he was then threatened. The problem is they think they are above the law they carry loaded shotguns and feel they can do as they wish. The gendarmes are not interested they say if it happens again let us know. This particular group are not friendly aggressive and donot behave well when our livestock and young children are around.
You would probably be best checking at your local Mayors office...
I live in the Lot. Does anyone know which days are the no hunting days, when it would be safe to hike with my dogs? Thanks
Jane - loaded guns are not allowed within 150 metres of a maison d'habitation and that includes the furthest point of your ooutbuildings if they're attached to your house. It helps to measure it out on Google maps, then you can shout at the hunters with absolute authority when they claim that a) they're acting within the law and b) they're more than 150 metres away.
We learnt from our first French neighbour that the only way to deal with ibntrusive chasseurs is to shout at them. Loudly. Again and again and again. Eventually they tend to give up. I now go up to anyone I see with a gun and say, You do know there's a house there?/You're too close/thaat track is used by cars all the time, you can't shoot there...
We've been lving in the Gironde for 19 years and the chasse seems to have tightened its act up tremendously. They were frighteningly agressive when we first came, especially in Barsac, but apart from someone really shooting too close to the house yesterday as part of a battu (who got yelled at and moved off) we haven't had trouble for ages.
After London I lived in Kent and in Berkshire. In Kent the roads were literally covered in rabbits but in both there were pheasants all over the place. Hardly see a pheasant here. I would certainly agree that the chasse feels its all powerful and without doubt there are wild excesses here and in the UK, not to mention the good ol' USA. Some friends lived on a large estate in Lincs where the daily bags were in the several hundred brace if not 1000 plus . A client Julian Bond wrote the screen play for "The Shooting Party"- a nice movie. As architects we designed a "shooting ground" in Berkshire and did alot of work on a large Scottish estate. I do seem to vaguely remember that there was some wine involved in both places. These places put alot of cash and investment into local economies, and create employment. Swampy didn't.
In our parish in one year there were over 80 accidents while chasing foxes. OK, that was exceptional, 20 plus was not. Two foxes were caught during the whole season. The worst accident was a broken back, there were several broken legs, etc. Within the parish it was a requirement they were recorded, none of them were shown on publish noticeboards or the like because they did not require to be minuted. They were information given to the council.
In the Bury St Edmunds district adjoining, shooting estate accidents went in dozens each year. Because nobody was killed there were no public reports. However, beaters are often seriously injured and pensioned off for the rest of their lives if it is that bad. All of the incidents are dealt with quietly and efficiently by private medicine and not public hospitals. If all accidents in England and Wales were put together as a single number I imagine there would be public outrage. Scotland, with its own hunting laws, is even worse probably more like France because that is where people with a lot of money simply pay to hunt, whether they have a licence or not are given a large, dangerous weapon and start shooting a few minutes after the first wee dram. Scandalous. Intolerable and the SNP does not have the guts to own up and do anything about it.
However Carol, I agree with what you say about naming and shaming. I think that in neither case is keeping shut up at all defensible. Both are hypocritical and usually stupid. The difference is that when the occasional member of the public not involved with hunting gets hurt in England and Wales that is reported, here it is not. That is particularly obnoxious. Is one better than the other? Ultimately no. The difference here is that hunters are not confined to estates.
We had two hunting associations using the land around our gites; The first was run by local farmers and the local community and shot deer. They used their beaten up farm vans and some of them were young enough to have a mobile phone. If there were any problems you could speak to their president and we always got a part of a big kill. The social aspect was very important for our little village which maintains a very strong community of all ages.
The others were of the 4x4 variety (I have one myself) flying around kicking up dust and on their phones. They were the young ones and not particularly local. They were allowed to hunt sangliers. Never got near their president to complain about their driving habits!
We lived in a shooting area in Berkshire before. There are accidents Brian...but nothing like as frequently as here...its almost as if in France if you are a hunter and pepper people/animals/buildings with shot its par for the course....in the UK believe me...when there is an incident involving people they are in touch with the papers asap...and good for them too.... the power of the press is often denigrated...but by God they have their uses....name and shame I believe in.
Last year my husband was sitting on our patio when all of a sudden he - and our french doors were peppered with shot! Not only that but we had a dog running through our garden frightening the cats. I have now put up large "Chasse Interdite" signs on the entrances to our fields and since then they haven't come near. They do still shoot in the fields next to our house and I have to keep my young cat in as she loves to wander and I don't want them shooting her "by mistake" I thought they were supposed to be 100mtrs from houses and the road - and shoot away from these but it seems they do just as they please, or they do round us.