NEWS AND COMMENT-FRANCE: In the Sologne area of central France, wealthy French landowners are being criticised for canned hunts. That is the only way you can describe them. They are fencing in their forests. There are an estimated 2,500 miles of fences around privately owned forests. Inside these forests are all the usual wildlife that you find in that part of France: wild boar, stags and fallow deer and they have nowhere to go.
These animals are becoming semi-domesticated in these fenced-off areas where they multiply swiftly and where the chances of escape are severely limited. This ensures that wealthy guests of wealthy landowners have the opportunity to satisfy their bloodlust and come away with at least one kill of one innocent animal.
Organisers of the canned hunts announce at the beginning of the day that all the animals in the “park” can be killed even the wild sows with piglets (as reported on the website: stop-chasse.fr). For one animal advocate, the founding president of One Voice, Muriel Arnal, it’s like target shooting but using living animals as the targets.
For me, it reminds me very much of South Africa’s canned lion hunts for wealthy tourists who have to come away from their expensive holiday with evidence that they are great hunters when in fact they are miserable bloodthirsty cowards who shoot some poor depressed lion whose been confined to a couple of acres of scrubland waiting for that high-calibre rifle bullet to penetrate his chest and exploded inside his chest cavity. I can remember some disgusting South African organiser of one of these canned hunts saying that it gives him great joy when a bullet hits the spot and the lion is completely suppressed and killed almost instantly. Quite horrible to think about.
Those organisers (see photo) who put up the fences around forest in support of these canned hunts say that they prevent passers-by from straying onto land during hunting parties. They also help their business interests. And one hit the nail on the head: they said that the fencing ensures that “his important guests” did not go home empty-handed after a day’s hunting.
A member of Parliament with President Macron’s ruling party, François Cormier-Bouligeon, has introduced a private members bill to ban the shooting of game in fenced-off land. He describes it as carnage. Sadly, he’s in favour of hunting in general but not canned hunting. There are other aspects of French hunting which are objectionable: French hunters of Provence glue thrushes to twigs and branches.
RELATED: 2 French hunting accidents in which a motorist was shot dead but a wild boar was the target.
And at the end of the day when the carcass of a deer does not fit the boot of a car, they take out a saw and cut off the animal’s hooves. They are happy and tired at the end of a thoroughly enjoyable day of killing innocent animals with no means of escape.
Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.
