Hunting in France

You probably won’t encounter any hunters during one of our walking holidays, it’s more or less a winter activity. There are well over a million hunters in France - groups of men (usually) gather together early in the morning and head up into the hills, spreading out strategically. Then most of them remain still for a few hours acting as spotters, while a handful follow the scent of an unfortunate animal with their dogs, and eventually, someone gets to use their rifle. There’s a lot of standing around, like cricket but with khaki and camouflage.

A big question of course is safety - what are the risks to hunters or walkers - is it dangerous? Only after lunch is the usual answer, but to be fair the sport is well regulated. The main barrier to entry is the difficult compulsory training and testing process; Macron halved the cost to a few hundred euros to keep the masses happy, and you need a couple of hundred more each year to maintain membership of the local hunting association. There is a strict list of permitted species and a quota is set and records kept. Hunters are able to go where they please on privately owned land, but there is a procedure available to block them from accessing your land, at which point you can put a sign up to remind them, or of course you can ask them informally to respect your wishes.

We won’t be offering hunting based holidays any time soon, but if you are interested in our walking or activity holidays, please contact us.