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I thought that the term ‘hillbillies’ applied only to the Appalachians and to the Ozark and I am glad to see that ‘real people’ have now moved westwards into the Rockies; let’s hope that they will colonize California next!

Land in France either belongs to the State (administrated by the Forestry Commission or ‘Office National des Forêts’), or to local communities, or to private owners. In order to be allowed to hunt you need to come to an agreement with the land owner by either:
• renting land from private owners;
• or by becoming the member of a village hunting syndicate in order to be allowed to hunt the village’s land (possible in theory if you do not live permanently in the area but difficult in practice, mainly in remote or mountain areas, as our local hillbillies do not like sharing their game with outsiders);
• or by buying temporary hunting licences from the French Forestry Commission for hunting state-owned land or renting permanently from them large tracts of land.

In my own case, in order to give you a practical example of the above:
• I am the member of my village’s hunting syndicate: I shoot there fox and other vermin for training, as well as wood pigeon. I am also allowed to stalk for wild boar, but this doesn’t happen much in practice as in our area wild boars only get out at night because of hunting pressure, and night hunting is not allowed in France. For hunting wild boars during the day, hounds are essential to get the beasts out of cover, and I do not like participating to driven hunts. I cannot stalk for roe deer in my village’s area as the hunting syndicate retains all roe deer hunting rights for driven hunting, which is the usual form of hunting in most of France.
• I am also the member of another village’s hunting syndicate in my area, where roe deer stalking is permitted, and I buy annually buck tags from them.
• For mountain hunting, I use to hunt Government land; a Forestry Commission guard guides me (useful as he knows well the area) and I am charged on the value of the isard trophy(ies) I harvest (the bigger the trophy is the more I pay), based on their CIC rating. Depending on territories’ location, one can hunt all big game species (roe deer, red deer, sitka deer, fallow deer, mouflon, chamois & isard, and wild boar) with the Forestry Commission in France. Brown bear, wolf and ibex are – unfortunately, fully protected country-wide.

Hope that this will help you to get a clearer view of our local picture!

Louis