While several injuries have already been identified and one person died following gunfire, one month to the day since the start of the season, the government should announce a plan to further regulate the practice. Traveling in the Marne, the Secretary of State for Ecology, Bérangère Couillard, must indeed reveal several leads this Tuesday, according to franceinfo.
Several points will still be negotiated until the Christmas holidays and measures will be enacted at the end of 2022 or the beginning of 2023 depending on the radio.
One of the key measures of the plan is the introduction of an alcohol offence. Alcohol is indeed the cause of 9% of hunting accidents, according to a Senate report. The government wants hunters to be subject to the same rules as motorists: they will therefore not be allowed to practice if they have more than 0.5 grams of alcohol per liter of blood. Controls should be carried out either by agents of the French Office for Biodiversity or by the gendarmes. The amount of the fine in the event of positive tests is not yet known.
Other devices will be added, such as better training of hunters in first aid gestures. It is also planned to generalize shooting only when the game is at a 30 degree angle in front of the hunter. A practice already in place in many departments and which makes it possible to avoid shooting at a hunting neighbor. Walkers should also be better informed about hunting times and locations through apps. A simpler device than consulting prefectural decrees or signs installed on trails.
“Hunters have authority over the use of nature and this is not normal. It is up to hunters to ensure that their leisure activity is not penalizing for other users of nature, argues Allain Bougrain- Dubourg, president of the League for the protection of birds. We must impose a day of non-hunting in France, preferably on Sunday.» The Senate mission on hunting safety, created after the success of a petition following a fatal accident, spoke out in mid-September against the national introduction of hunting-free days, instead advocating measures to promote the «cohabitation» of hunters/non-hunters.
“It is out of the question that we let go on Sunday afternoon, we are not sub-humans, reacted the president of the National Federation of Hunters, Willy Schraen, at the microphone of franceinfo, this Tuesday morning. There are many people who suddenly decide at 3 p.m., when there is a ray of sunshine, to go out into the forest. They come face to face with hunters and, because they listen to TV and the radio, they are terrified because they think it is more dangerous than Ukraine and that there are 300 deaths a day» , he castigates, pointing to a communication problem.
However, he declared himself «open to discussions» on a limitation of hunting days, specifying that «when you are at home or when you rent the right to hunt, you still have the right to do what you wants in the private domain». He thus pleads a differentiation from the «public domain». Willy Schraen is also in favor of introducing an alcohol test on the same model as for motorists: «with 30 million hunting days every year for three or four alcohol-related accidents, hunters have chosen for a long time. Now, to get out of the hysteria of certain tenors of the extreme left who want to permanently kill us, you have to put an alcohol test, no problem».
In France, 428 dead have died in twenty years due to a hunting accident, according to the French office for biodiversity. «It’s far too much,» said Senator Les Républicains François-Noël Buffet, who participated in the report on security and hunting. In question, «mishandling of weapons», «non-compliance with safety standards» and sometimes «an unfortunate incident».