Incidents during a horse and hound hunt in Rambouillet woodland: One Voice is once again calling for a true hunting reform!

In 2018, faced with increased violations by horse and hound hunting groups, the Mesnuls Mayor passed a municipal decree banning this practice in urban areas of the town. On Saturday 19 November, while a young stag was taking cover in a resident’s garden, a horse and hound hunting group, identified by witnesses as ‘the Rallye Bonnelles’, completely illegally entered the town, which was supposed to be a sanctuary. But the hunters again relied on their privileges and trampled, as they usually do, on the rules that apply to everyone else, with total impunity. Forced into the garden by dogs under their command, the young stag was killed.

Violations increase, hunters are still untouchable

The owner of the house, an elderly woman living alone, was in a state of shock. She stated: she would never have accepted this intrusion onto her property and would not have wanted this killing to have happened. But, under pressure from police officers and hunters, she could only watch helplessly as the young stag was killed after going back to her house. Obviously, the police had not informed her of the possibility of reporting a crime against the group for having illegally entered her property.

The hunters committed at least three violations: a violation of the municipal decree of 2018 banning hunting with hounds in an urban areas, hunting on private property without the consent of the landowner, and a violation of the 2019 decree on horse and hound hunting making it necessary that the animal is left alone under such circumstances. Obviously, the hunters had not been worried, unlike witnesses at the scene, to whom the police had made it clear that they should keep their distance.

Once again, the State took a clear position: when it comes to respecting the regulations and protecting residents, they systematically put hunters’ needs first.

For a ban, pure and simple, on horse and hound hunting

These violations are not isolated: they are the inevitable consequence of a form of hunting that has no place in the twenty-first century and of which 82% of French people oppose. Thanks to their three-year infiltration into the horse and hound hunting world, One Voice has widely documented the unbearable suffering that this practice causes to animals: to deer, clearly, but also to packs of dogs, regularly subjected to abuse.

While public opinion is ready and the legal system itself believes that tradition is not a sufficient argument to justify certain forms of cruel hunting, the government is still resisting, systematically supported by hunters.

Faced with the insufficient nature of former reforms, One Voice is strongly reiterating their call for a radical hunting reform, and for a ban, pure and simple, on horse and hound hunting.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice