Raising awareness of the harmful effects of hunting: One Voice is rallying in ten towns in France on 8 and 9 October

The day after the publication of the decrees on traditional hunting of field larks, that One Voice went up against the State Council for, and the publication of the IPSOS/One Voice survey on the opinions of French people regarding hunting, on the weekend of 8 and 9 October, One Voice is organising national action coordinated by their local branches to raise awareness among the population of the harmful effects of hunting… regarding the animals killed, of course, but also the dogs used as weapons and considered as tools, the risks for humans, and the pollution that this hobby inflicts on natural spaces. One Voice will therefore be in Bordeaux, Gap, La Rochelle, Lille, Montpellier, Nantes, Nice, Paris, Rouen, and Troyes.

Penned hunting, traditional hunting, gun or bow hunting, badger or fox digging, trapping birds, hunting with hounds… in the 21st century, all of these practices still exist despite people’s wishes to radically reform them.

Hunting in France: there are between 6,000 and 8,000 tonnes of lead in the wild, 20 million animals coming from breeding farms to be released and slaughtered, 45 million animals slaughtered each year, and 90 species of animals killed each year!

One Voice has opposed it for years and tries to make change in mentalities in France by demonstrating the suffering of the animals, the absurdity of the practice, and the collateral damage that hunting brings about. Hundreds of thousands of citizens and tens of associations with these demands want to change that from our side.

Today, double standards still exist for some animals. Dogs for example… artificially branded with ‘hunting’ as a qualitative term. We imagine them running through woods and countryside, happy to satisfy their instinct to prey and their need to exert themselves. But behind the idealised image, the reality is much different. The life of hunting dogs is a life of being a weapon as a purpose, of being a tool.

Because once the guns are put away, the exhausted dogs, often injured, are shut into small barred vans. Headed for the kennels, the dogs are tied to stakes in the mud or confined in cramped cages.

Parched, malnourished, sometimes beaten if they do not obey quick enough, many wearing shock collars which send an electric shock if they dare to bark.

Some even live among the remains of other dogs, our infiltration investigations into various hunts and those into kennels in Dordogne and in Jura have highlighted.

Consult the links for each town for the exact date, time, and place.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice