France: hunting stands systematically sawn down – culprit unknown for three years

For over three years, high seats belonging to hobby hunters have been methodically destroyed around Lac de Paladru in the French département of Isère – and the culprit remains unknown to this day.

28 hunting stands have been brought down since 2022. Always the same picture: the support posts cleanly and deliberately sawn through at the base, but the structure left standing upright.

This week, local hobby hunting officials presented one of the destroyed high seats to the press in order to draw attention to the problem. The case was picked up by France 3 as well as by Petit Bleu and Chasse Passion.

Surveillance comes to nothing

The Fédération départementale des chasseurs de l’Isère tried to catch the perpetrator in the act using camera traps. The result: the person recognisable in a few images consistently wears a balaclava and is therefore unidentifiable. To this day no suspect has been officially named. Despite several criminal complaints, the investigation is leading nowhere.

The cuts are clean and point to a practised, routine approach. For the hobby hunters there is no question that these are targeted, repeated and perfectly co-ordinated acts of sabotage.

A pattern running across the whole of France

The case in Isère is not an isolated one. In the département of Yonne, 22 high seats were destroyed in January 2025; in Haut-Rhin, ladder rungs were sawn through. At the end of May 2026, Villey-le-Sec in Meurthe-et-Moselle reported seven completely irreparable high seats. In autumn 2025, a group claimed responsibility for nationwide acts of sabotage shortly before the opening of the hunting season. The justice system has so far not solved a single case in this series. The resentment in the affected hunting act circles is growing – and so, apparently, is the sense of impunity on the other side.