The veneur has always been a horseman. Today, many horsemen are tempted to become horsemen. This happy symbiosis is part of the development of outdoor riding, within which the venison has been recognized as a specific character by the official authorities governing the equestrian world. It represents a cavalry of 6000 horses, 20000 dogs of pack, 800000 hectares of forest territory distributed on about sixty departments, for 12000 days of hunting per year.
The venerie: the hunting crew
Like any sport activity, hunting with hounds needs to rely on a specific structure: the team.
In France, there are about 150 hunting teams, whose packs are “creancées” in the way of stag, roe deer and wild boar. We will not mention here those who hunt foxes, hares or even rabbits.
A crew is directed by a manager: the crew master. He is helped by salaried employees: the pickers. The “buttons” are the partners of the crew master. They contribute to the financing of the association through their membership fees, which is in fact equivalent to what the shareholders of a shooting hunt are; equivalence reinforced by the fact that they are obliged to hold a hunting license. The boatswain and the buttons can have guests. The occasional nature of these guests does not authorize them to hunt, but only to follow. They are exempted from the license.
Like any sports team, each crew has its supporters; in hunting, they are called “followers”.
All these categories together constitute a public of several tens of thousands of people who, from September to April, criss-cross and animate our state or private forests.
Hunting: the day of hunting with hounds
This day, we will have the leisure to examine it in more nuances by analyzing what differentiates the “laisser-courre”, according to the hunted animals. We will limit ourselves here to enumerate the phases so that one perceives the richness of venery at the same time as the variety of ringing. It should be noted in this respect that the hunting horn, as it is used today, appeared in the 17th century and that it is enriched each year with new fanfares. The instrument is played by more than 3,000 people.
The day of the driver begins at dawn with the work of the “valet de limier” who goes “to make the wood” with his dog, the “limier”, in order to locate the animals. The “report” takes place at the end of the morning at the place of the “appointment”. Those who have done the wood give the report of their “quest” to the boatswain. He will then decide to go on such or such “broken”. The dogs will be “uncoupled” in order to “attack” what will be the only animal hunted. First of all, it will be a “bringing together”, followed by the “throwing” and then the actual hunting will begin.
Fanfares indicate the course of the hunt: the “bien-aller”, the “vue”, the “animaux de compagnie”, the “change”, the “défaut”, the “débucher”, the “changement de forêt”, the “relancer”, the “bat-l’eau”, the “hallali courant”, the “abois” if there is a catch, or the “retraite manquée” if there is no catch.
Vènerie : deer hunting
Forty crews are credentialed in the deer track and generally hunt twice a week. The law requires the crew to decouple at least 30 dogs per hunt, which leads the crews to have at least 50 dogs following the importance given to breeding. The most widely represented dog type in deer teams is the Anglo-French tricolor. A deer territory should comprise an average of 10,000 to 15,000 hectares. To meet the requirements of the hunting plan to which a team is subject by the supervisory administration, it is necessary to take two out of three. This high rate of catch is facilitated by the “feeling” left by the way of the deer, which is almost always constant, contrary to that of the roe deer or the hare whose running proves more delicate. In deer hunting, the morning quest is of the utmost importance, as the saying goes: “Stag well attacked, stag taken.” Once attacked, the stag ensures its defense by the use of ruses that are specific to him and that we will group under three headings.
- The change: the stag pursued tries to mix with a herd, then to deliver to the dogs a younger stag that it forces to run by charging it with its antlers. As the deer is heated up, the attacking animal flees and the dogs fall “in default”.
- Water: it plays an important role in the defense system of the deer. Like the roe deer, it will willingly go upstream in a river, because it knows that the way will go down and put the dogs in difficulty. It is also common to see it hiding in the reeds of a pond or to be caught there, after several crossings to swim.
- The forlonger: this term refers to the advance that a deer can take when, taking advantage of a defect, it relies on the speed of its flight to increase the distance that separates it from the pack. This defense is usually made by old deer that have been hunted before.
In principle, if the hunted animal maintains a fast train, it will be caught quite easily. If, on the other hand, he follows the pack’s pace and, in a way, “plays the clock”, things will be much more uncertain.
Venerie : deer hunting
In France, there are 80 deer hunting teams. About twenty dogs are used per hunt, the most used being the Poitevins or the French Blanc et Noir. The hunting territory can be limited to 5,000 hectares. All this shows that it is a much less expensive hunt than the one of the stag.
The hunting of the roe deer remains, with that of the hare, the most delicate.
Very cunning, the roe deer also has a lot of substance and defends itself particularly well in the change. Its track, by nature light, gets thinner as the hunt goes on, until it becomes almost non-existent. This hunt becomes more and more complicated. After half an hour or three quarters of an hour, the tricks begin and will not stop. The double-track is a frequent ruse of this animal; it executes it, either by going back and forth and ending with a sideways leap, or by putting itself on its stomach and letting the dogs pass, or by making a loop to find itself behind the pack and go back up by taking its count.
Vènerie : wild boar hunting
Called “vautraits”, the boar crews are thirty in number. To hunt well in this way, it is necessary to have a large pack and to be able to decouple at least thirty dogs each time. Packs of vultures are most frequently made up of Anglo-French tricolors or Fox-Hounds.
The nomadic nature of the wild boar requires hunting on very large territories or, better still, on several forests, in order to diversify the attacks. A hunter who hunts twice a week will be able to take one out of two, but will know many “hollow bushes” as the “pigs” are used to change their location within a few hours. This is why the main defense of the boar is its speed and endurance. It is essential to attack the boar at the barge and not fleeing. To take, dogs must be “fast”. Defects are all the more rare as the track is strong and tenacious. Like all the animals of venery, the boar can “tap in the exchange”. One must then be very vigilant, because nothing resembles more a “pet” than another. It is frequent that it takes five or six hours to catch it.
Hunting and the hound horse
By the aptitudes of its users, the importance of its cavalry and its specific character, the hunting is an equestrian activity in its own right. It also responds to a growing taste for outdoor riding.
It is necessary that a hunting horse is “fast” and “all-terrain”; that it has balance and that it is both calm and generous. He will offer the best security to the hunter, who must be able to count on his horse during the three to five hours of a hunt. It is possible to hunt with any horse, from the pony to the thoroughbred. Nevertheless, the most used are the Selle Français and the Trotter. However, it is important to use only horses that are at least five years old to make sure that their feet, pasterns and fetlocks are strong enough.
From then on, we will try to obtain from a hunting horse that he has long and regular actions giving him power and lightness. He must have three good gaits: the gallop for the woods, the trot for the stones and, above all, a very good step allowing him to recover with ease. Compared to the horse, the driver must have a sense of the terrain, observation and orientation. He will adjust the gaits by knowing how to judge the possibilities of his mount according to the course to be provided. Finally, he must be a perfect outdoor rider, in other words, a true horseman. If this is the case, he will have quickly understood that what he needs is a mount with a long and wide croup, with low and dry hocks, a muscular back, chest, shoulder, strong and well tempered limbs as well as a withers far enough back so that he doesn’t hurt himself in the saddle, and last but not least, a nice neck well out of the way which brings balance. When all of this is in place, all that’s left to do is write a check and go hunting!
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