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From 10 to 23 September, One Voice is rallying for a radical reform of hunting and the dogs used

From 10 to 23 September, One Voice is rallying for a radical reform of hunting and the dogs used

Hunting
08.09.2023
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One Voice is organising protests in twenty metropolitan towns to fight against hunting and to defend dogs.

This Sunday 10 September marks the opening of the 2023-2024 hunting season. For almost six months, no animal will be safe in forests and fields. Pursued without mercy, including the use of the cruellest practices like hunting with hounds, penned hunting, or badger and fox digging, they will be among the 45 million individuals (wild or coming from breeding farms) to succumb to this activity this year. We also have not forgotten about the ‘hunting’ dogs, used as tools at the risk of losing their lives. We will be protesting throughout France from 10 to 23 September for them. Join us in Sisteron (04), Nice (06), Troyes (08), Aix-en-Provence (13), Falaise (14), La Rochelle (17), Montpellier (34), Nantes (44), Angers (49), Langres (52), Metz (57), Lille (59), Bayonne (64), Strasbourg (67), Lyon (69), Paris (75), Rouen (76), Amiens (80), Avignon (84), and Limoges (87).

Once again, nature is about to change into a place of carnage for the pleasure of just a few people. While hunters all have the hobby of killing, more than 7 in 10 French people living near these sinister playing fields cannot benefit from the surrounding fields and forests without having a knot in their stomachs (IPSOS/One Voice survey, October 2022).

Exploited during hunting, forgotten the rest of the time, and beaten or even killed by ‘mistake’

Among the victims of this activity are also the ‘hunting’ dogs. Starved then unceremoniously stuffed into trailers, they are sent to make contact with animals that risk injuring them by trying to defend themselves. If one of them is affected, it potentially has to put up with the pain for several days before being examined by a veterinarian – if they even get this opportunity, because, as our investigators filmed, having your companion treated by a professional is just one of many options for hunters, with some improvising and acting as ‘war surgeons’ at times.

Then they have to return to their kennel, where the unfortunate ones are put back with no qualms and remain alone, far from prying eyes, for days, sometimes with no food or water and often wearing a shock collar to stop them from barking. Trampling through their own excrement and sometimes among bones or other types of waste, many of them suffer. Not much later than last January, we filed a complaint for mistreatment of dogs being left to their own devices in Lot-et-Garonne. Some of them had eye injuries, some were limping, none of them had fresh water… A surreal scene that is far from being an exception. In March 2020, we filed a complaint for twenty-two others, cooped up in pairs in outdoor enclosures in Jura.

Unacceptable privileges!

When we can, we are successful in getting the dogs rescued and putting them somewhere safe, as we did for sixteen of them in Dordogne. And when some hunters are filmed in the act of hitting them with a stick, there is no room for doubt about the fate that awaits them when no one is there to see. We are going to the courts for this case too.

But hunters’ privileges still protect them far too often from any sanctions. For having left his dogs alone and at the mercy of the bad weather, the owner of the Jura kennels only received a reprimand. It seems that these trigger-happy enthusiasts are above the law. During the lockdown in Autumn 2020, many of them obtained permission from prefects to indulge in their deadly hobby despite health restrictions, and their chief lobbyist even got the Minister of Ecology to resign, who was in fact very popular in the position.

Hunting requires this radical reform that we are asking for and that is taking so long to happen. Between the minimal ministerial measures in total opposition to attempts by the population and human deaths which are added to the animal victims every year, we are once again asking for the authorities to make decisions in line with their responsibilities, instead of attacking those who defend nature and its inhabitants, and for the common good.

From 10 to 23 September, we are rallying in twenty towns in France to defend ‘hunting’ dogs. So that they can benefit from the same protection as others and to stop the impunity in principal that hunters benefit from, join us in the streets, where our activists will be raising public awareness on this subject, and sign our petitions for hunting dogs and to obtain a radical reform on hunting.

Check before going that the event is still in the same place, on the same date and at the same time stated.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

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