On the way back from Tours, encountered La chasse along the side of the road. Usual thing for round here: bright orange coats and badly parked cars and vans 
But as we passed one of the hunters, he stepped out into the road and waved a thing that looked like a stick attached to a cord, to which a ball was attached.
Is the mace still the weapon of choice up there?
I think that would actually be a Flail.
He was offering you a hit from the traditional hunting bong.
Very rude of you to shun it.
were there any signs to say what they were hunting?? any warning signs at all ??
I didn’t see any, @Stella , though there was a hand-painted sign with lots of pictures on it. That was another peculiar thing. Where we live, they are very generous with their signage. And seeing them fairly frequently (and knowing at least one) means I knew what la chasse looks like.
At least yesterday’s chasseurs were all wearing the same hi-vis (and I saw at least one with a shotgun bag).
Of course, if the usual warning signs were absent, they weren’t necessarily actually hunting anything, might have been sussing out the lay of the land or whatever…
wish you’d got a photo of the gadget the chap waved around 
Maybe he was bored and playing bilboquet 
.
possibly for having a go at the undergrowth… rather than threatening the passing motorist
I think that you’re actually correct - no chain on a mace.
…. how on earth could I actually forget that?
I reckon that it’s a similar situation to a laptop where the brain first archives old information, and then subsequently deletes it as storage space is required for more recent input. So forgetting old stuff is simply evidence that one is still learning new stuff. Well that’s my excuse anyway. 
I agree with this, when I was at school I did French but then when I went to live in Denmark at 18 as I learned the Danish equivalent of the few French phrases I knew the French ones disappeared from my brain 
and I had to totally start again when I arrived here!