France: Recreational Hunters Drown Deer
In France, where the hunting season on horseback with packs of hounds is currently under way, anti-hunting activists from AVA are filming the unbelievable barbarities carried out by recreational hunters. Across the country, deer are being chased to death and either torn apart alive by the dogs, or drowned — for example, using inflatable dinghies.
In France, where the hunting season on horseback with packs of hounds is currently under way, anti-hunting activists from AVA are filming the unbelievable barbarities carried out by recreational hunters. Across the country, deer are being chased to death and either torn apart alive by the dogs, or drowned — for example, using inflatable dinghies.
Government supports brutal hunt
The government is ignoring the growing resistance among citizens, as President Macron has repeatedly and explicitly expressed his support for this form of “traditional” animal cruelty. Tragic accidents caused by recreational hunters also continue to occur time and again.
Public successfully fights back
In this video, local residents successfully stand up to the recreational hunters. The deer was able to return to the forest and its freedom. The mayor subsequently received messages of thanks and praise from people across the entire country.
In Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and elsewhere, this form of hunting — which involves unleashing a pack of hungry dogs on wild animals to kill them — has been banned for decades. In France, it is the subject of fierce controversy. As a result, more and more activists are venturing into French forests to obstruct the recreational hunters. This is especially true of the AVA association (Abolissons la Vénerie Aujourd’hui), whose members are regularly on the ground to document the barbarities of the recreational hunters on video. AVA activists also employ the tactic of feeding the hunting dogs in order to distract them.
On December 16th of last year, they decided to sabotage the hunt in the Laigue forest. In a video posted on Facebook, the association explains that the recreational hunters had planned to chase the deer with their pack of dogs until they drowned in a pond.
After the feeding, the dogs did not continue the pursuit. «No deer were killed today,» AVA commented with satisfaction in the video. More on this topic under Recreational hunting internationally and Animal welfare issue.
More on this in the dossier: Hunting and animal welfare
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier The Role and Criticism of Recreational Hunters we shed light on the training, power and self-image of recreational hunters. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
