Headless red deer at Luc Besson's: recreational hunting association contradicts the director
The director blames recreational hunters for a headless red deer in front of his house, the association of the Orne disagrees, and it is not the first conflict over Besson's refuge for red deer.
On Sunday, 20 September 2026, the French director Luc Besson published a photo on X of a dead red deer without a head.
According to him, the carcass lay in front of his house in the Département de l'Orne in Normandy. Besson holds recreational hunters responsible. He writes, in essence, that red deer are now being beheaded in front of his house and their bodies left to rot, and asks how one can still speak of the «noblesse» of recreational hunting. He also points to the recreational hunting season, which had just opened.
What the recreational hunting association says
Speaking to the French recreational hunting portal «Chasse Passion», the Fédération départementale des chasseurs de l'Orne rejects any connection with the season's opening. President Christophe de Balorre argues that the non-human animal shows no bullet wound and was heavily decomposed, meaning it had died well before the weekend in question. As possible causes, the association cites the exertions of the rut, a collision with a vehicle, or a fence that can be seen in Besson's photo. It also states that the carcass had already been reported to the Office français de la biodiversité (OFB) more than a week earlier. This report has not yet been independently confirmed.
Chasse Passion accuses the director of spreading his accusation to tens of thousands of followers without any verification. One passage in the same article is notable: because neither a bullet wound nor a kill tag is visible, a person familiar with recreational hunting would rather notify the OFB on suspicion of poaching. Even the recreational hunting portal itself thus considers a crime more plausible than an accident.
Not an isolated case: Besson and the recreational hunters of Orne
Chasse Passion portrays Besson's reaction as an overreaction. The backstory shows why the director is suspicious.
2019 and 2021: Besson does not tolerate recreational hunting on his 160-hectare estate at the edge of the state forest of Saint-Évroult. The recreational hunting association of Orne therefore sued him for 122,198 euros: the red deer that find refuge on his land were allegedly causing damage to neighbouring farmers. On 26 December 2019 the court in Argentan dismissed the claim. It found neither unusual concentrations of red deer on the property nor any evidence that the damage originated from these animals. The association appealed the ruling and also failed in October 2021 before the Cour d’appel de Caen; it had to reimburse Besson's legal costs. We reported on this at the time under the title «France: ecological mass murderers lose court case».
February 2025: On 21 February 2025, two recreational hunters entered the estate with a pack of hounds. A hunted red deer had fled onto the terrace of Besson's mother, then 85 years old. One of the men held the antlers while the other killed the animal with a blade, while the mother filmed the scene. Besson explained at the time that such intrusions onto his property occurred repeatedly. Our report: «Recreational Hunters Kill Red Deer on Star Director's Property».
January 2026: The criminal court of Argentan found the two men, aged 33 and 41, guilty on 20 January 2026: unlawful recreational hunting on enclosed private land and recreational hunting with prohibited means. They lost their hunting licence for one year, must attend an OFB course on hunting law and safety, and received fines of 1,200 and 600 euros respectively. In addition, they must jointly pay the civil parties 3,000 euros in damages. The court noted that the red deer had not been fatally injured. Besson's mother said she would have wished for a significantly harsher sentence. In February 2026, one of the two men appealed.
September 2026: Now the headless deer in front of the house.
Besson is not alone in such experiences. As early as January 2025, Tom Arthus-Bertrand, son of photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, had publicised similar incidents on his land and launched a petition against hunting with packs of hounds. It seems that anyone in France who offers wild animals a refuge must reckon with the pack entering anyway.
The open question: who severed the head?
The association's explanation concerns the cause of death, not the state of the carcass. A fence, a car or a rutting fight does not sever a head. A human being did that. In September, red deer carry their fully developed antlers. Anyone who takes the head from a dead deer during this period is, as a rule, taking the trophy with them.
Whether a recreational hunter, a poacher or a trophy collector was responsible cannot be deduced from the photo. Besson's accusation is thus unproven. But the association's version — that the deer died a natural death and had nothing to do with recreational hunting — likewise fails to explain the decisive finding. And the association, which now complains of premature accusations of blame, has faced Besson several times before: in 2019 and 2021 as plaintiff, and in 2025 as the umbrella organisation of the men who stabbed a deer to death on his terrace.
Context
The case reveals a familiar pattern: dead wild animals bearing signs of human involvement are rarely investigated, and in the end the interpretation is left to those involved. The association defends its members before the authorities have even investigated. How difficult France finds it to prosecute offences connected with recreational hunting is also shown by the trial concerning the nocturnal poaching by off-road vehicle and the proceedings against Olivier Bouygues over suspected wild animal harassment.
In Switzerland, the situation looks hardly any better. How leniently poaching is punished here is shown by the case of the wolf in the Matter Valley, which cost the shooter 300 francs. We collect further cases in the section crime and hunting.
A refuge like Besson's would also hardly be possible in Switzerland. The right to hunt lies with the cantons, and landowners cannot forbid recreational hunting on their land in most cantons. More on this in our section on the Hunting Act. Whether recreational hunting actually reduces wildlife damage effectively, as the Orne association claimed in court, is disputed. We summarise the state of research in «Hunting Fact-Checked».
Sources: Chasse Passion (22.9.2026), France 3 Normandie, France Bleu Orne, Fondation 30 Millions d’Amis, Freiheit für Tiere.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on the criticism of recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
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.
All articles are written by IG Wild beim Wild as well as by external co-authors. Research, structuring and editorial processes may be supported by AI-assisted tools.
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