Hunting is France’s most popular pastime after fishing and football, but a series of recent shooting accidents has put its many enthusiasts in the firing line themselves. As presidential candidates fish for votes, the hunters see an opportunity to go on the offensive to defend a popular tradition dating back to the revolution.
Some four million people hold a licence to hunt in France, and 1.1 million activate them each year.
“We’re a political force,” William Schraen, president of the National Federation of Hunters (FNC), confidently told a number of presidential candidates at a meeting in Paris last week.
The hunting lobby is strong and even if the majority of French people live in urban areas, no politician with an eye on the Elysée can afford to neglect the rural vote.
“Hunting is part of the soul of the countryside,” says Denis Plat, chief editor at J’aime la Chasse online magazine.
Hunting used to be reserved for the nobility, but the 1789 revolution opened it up to everyone and since then it's become one of the most popular and socially diverse activities in France.
"It goes from workers to CEOs, lawyers or employees ... through to the so-called elite with very exclusive hunting estates," Plat explains. "This is the richness of the French hunting tradition and it gives it real strength."
But opposition, from animal rights campaigners in particular, is growing. Recent polls suggest more than half of French people have a negative view of hunting, and more than two-thirds want restrictions on hunting at weekends.
Plat maintains opponents are "disconnected" from the reality of rural life and don't understand that going out hunting with friends at the weekend is "oxygen" for factory workers.
He particularly dislikes people "who don't know a pheasant from a crow" giving him lessons on animal welfare.
Listen to a conversation with Denis Plat in the Spotlight on France podcast
A man’s world
Plat began hunting with his grandfather then father, and held a gun “before the legal age” – typical of a family tradition passed down from father to son.
A few women are joining the pack, too, making up about 3 percent of hunters, according to the FNC.
“It’s not a lot,” admits Sandrine Gueneau, director of the Loire region's hunting federation.
When she began with her Dad, “it was very rare to see women hunting" but that's changing, she says.
"Women are welcome, it's not a sexist domain, I've passed on the passion to my two daughters."
Aware of the need to attract new blood, the FNC recently launched an online campaign, claiming the support of young hunters like Johanna Clermont.
Dressed in the latest gear, posing proudly with her catch of the day, shotgun at her side, Clermont's Instagram account boasts 167,000 followers.
Gueneau doesn’t handle a gun herself but joins in hunts all over France with her dogs, tracking down wildboars, deer and roebucks.
“I don't shoot myself but I'm not opposed to killing animals because part of the role of a hunter is to regulate species," she says.
"I don't feel hunting is violent. Killing the animal is the final act but is it more violent than raising animals to then kill them [for food]?"
She also highlights the fact hunting is not just about shooting.
"It's a way of life and not everyone understands this. You're out nearly 365 days a year making pathways, clearing the forest ... And lots of hunting associations organise other activities. In some rural communities they're the only social link that's left."
No Greens please
Plat says hunters are more politically diverse than the media, or opponents of hunting, like to suggest. So it won't be easy to capture the hunting vote.
“Hunters do not vote right, left or centre; they are extremely diverse," he says. "In south-west France, the leftwing Socialist party is very powerful and a lot of hunters are from this part."
The only party, he says, that isn't represented among hunters is the Greens.
"We are enemies now, because the Greens are not only green, we call them the watermelons, green outside, red inside," in reference to what they see as the growing influence of the far left within the party.
Yannick Jadot, the French Greens presidential candidate, was pointedly not invited to last week’s meeting; neither was Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of hard-left France Unbowed.
The FNC argued no dialogue or debate was possible with parties that have trashed hunting so publicly.
Both parties have called for a ban on hunting at weekends and during school holidays. But the Greens have particularly infuriated hunters by pushing for an end to lead pellets and saying the ban on weekend and school holiday hunting was in order "to stop transmission" to the younger generation.
“They want to destroy a certain way of life, to be able to then destroy the society they hate,” Plat maintains.
"We are friends with real ecologists, people who understand that ethical hunting can be good for conservation."
Shootings
The problem is that people, not only animals, are getting the bullets – the recent deaths of a jogger and motorist caused outrage and prompted an enquiry by the Senate.
Plat says every accident, every death, is one too many and hunters are "the first to want to increase safety because [we make up] 95 percent of the victims".
He highlights the fact that fatalities have gone down by 70 percent over the last 20 years thanks to "some of the tightest regulations in Europe”.
Hunters are also proposing their own safety measures. They instigated the 2019 law requiring hunters to go to their federations once a decade to be "rebriefed about safety" in order to keep their permits.
Hunter-friendly candidates?
None of the candidates is pushing for an outright ban on hunting, which in any case would be impossible to implement since “most hunting is done on private lands" Plat says.
President Emmanuel Macron has won favour by halving the cost of hunting licences to around €200, though Ecology Minister Barbara Pompili's support for a ban on some traditional hunting practices such as glue-hunting has made her unpopular.
On Tuesday, FNC president Willy Schraen announced he would be voting for Macron from the first round.
Both far-right candidate Eric Zemmour and rightwing candidate Valérie Pecresse are explicitly courting the hunting vote, promising to satisfy a key FNC demand by setting up a ministry of rural life.
Far-right Marine le Pen has sent out mixed messages, defending rural traditions but also vowing to enshrine animal protection in the French constitution.
The most hunting-friendly candidates are Jean Lassalle, a former shepherd from the Pyrenees, and Fabien Roussel of the Communist Party.
While they are highly unlikely to make it through to the runoff on 24 April, hunters gave them a huge round of applause at last week's meeting, and an ego boost in the process.
