There are always people
asking what days are the hunting days in France
Part of the confusion where
it exists is that there isn’t simply one type of hunting or la chasse and that
la chasse is often erroneously thought of as being uniquely chasse en battue
that involves a minimum number of participants with some driving or flushing
through an area using dogs pushing any animals, (boar, deer, fox), out into the
open to where one or more hunters wait with guns. Usually this type of
organised hunt takes place on two or three specific days of the week that are
agreed at the commune level, (ours is Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays) and the
people that participate in this like to call themselves La Chasse. However rough shooting for smaller creatures,
birds, rabbits, hares etc. can take place on any day of the week although in
practice Wednesday afternoon is usually avoided due to being a half school day.
To be clear - La Chasse can
be defined as using various means in order to capture and kill creatures either
for eating or for destruction and no single group of hunters can claim this as
belonging to them alone.
There was a brief period from
July 2000 and July 2003 when hunting was banned on Wednesdays and this was
instituted throughout France at the request of the Minister of the Environment,
Dominique Voynet, through Article 24 of the hunting law 2000-698 of 26 July
2000, which stipulated: "Article L.224-2 of the Rural Code is worded as
follows: ... The practice of shooting hunting is prohibited from Wednesday 6 am to Thursday 6 am ". However in 2003, the repeal of this
"no-hunt Wednesday" was included in the bill on hunting put forward
by Roselyne Bachelot then Minister of Ecology! It was then voted into law by
the majority UMP-UC
The law of 2003-698 of July 30, 2003 , by Article 27, thus cancelled this provision
altogether (which had in the meantime been transposed to the rural code to that
of the environment): "The last paragraph of the Article L. 424-2 of the
Environmental Code is deleted."
Therefore only the Prefect of
each Departement can order days without hunting in application of the article
R.424-1 of the code of the environment but in practice this rarely occurs.
Other limits that are set
each year at the Departemental level each year limiting or restricting the time periods
and numbers of specific species will apply.
Chris
