The old man from whom I bought the house did warn me. "If you're in the garden when they start," he said, "it's safer to go indoors." Since the house is a peaceful farm up in the hills of southern France where at that moment there was nothing more violent than the sound of cicadas, I assumed his warning was an old man's mocking of the know-it-all younger generation. Anyway, Monsieur Sablier did not strike me as the type to dash indoors just because the local hunt was coming through. He shrugged at my disbelief: "They've taken the odd shot at me." Then as if by way of explanation: "They're my neighbours." Most of the high toll of hunting accidents are put down to the settling of scores.
A paysan born and bred, Monsieur Sablier does not hunt. Nor do 97 per cent of his countrymen. But a law banning it is nevertheless unthinkable: and not only in la France profonde-the idea raises just as many smiles in my other "home": the cosmopolitan city of Montpellier. "Hunting is an inalienable right," says a lawyer friend, "after all, it's a legacy of the Revolution." My baker prefers a less intellectual reason: passion. "The hunter is consumed by it. And where passion's concerned... Look how long the church has been trying to stop adultery."
During the season, three days a week are allotted to hunting: Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday. Employers have to schedule around employees who hunt: no question of forcing them to come to work or penalising them if they do not turn up. As I found with my builders, whom I watched trudging across my land every Wednesday when they should have been up on the roof.
The hunting day starts the evening before in the local bar. Over several beers and whiskies (only the English and characters in Pagnol plays drink pastis) tactics are discussed. The next morning (not particularly early, the sun is well up over the tops of the mountains) we meet up in the village square. Thirteen of us-12 in army surplus camouflage kit and me. It's like a TA exercise with dogs. My neighbour Andr?reets me-another passionate man, solid, warm, permanently cheerful. His hair standing up like a silver brush, his face tanned. We were mates as soon as he saw me, newly arrived, planting out my seedlings: his other passion is vegetables. He came by with a cartload of manure. Then strawberry plants were thrust into my hand. The invitation to hunt was not far behind. I nod to all my other neighbours for whom I am just l'anglais-the man from Mars. We stand about waiting, glaring menacingly at the non-hunting residents driving snugly to market. Our group is living proof that in France la chasse is truly populaire-the right of the common man. A plumber, the village mayor, a chap who does the washing-up in the kids' home, a foreman in local manufacturing (women's tights and stockings), and of course, the paysans. The average age must be over 60. To a man they pour scorn on my question about some hypothetical ban on hunting. "It's not a sport. It's our right." "What we won from the Revolution."
Three canvas-topped Jeeps roar into the quiet village square. The dogs leap aboard. As if pursuing some youthful dream, the hunters haul themselves up, trying to conceal their increasingly stiffening sinews. One of them gets his loaded rifle entangled in the camouflage netting. Semi-automatic, pump action, Remington or Luger. They cling white-knuckled to the sides as the Jeeps, followed by a couple of the younger element on motor cycles, roar up the road into the hills. We scream round tight bends, escorted front and rear by the young men in leather jackets and goggles, white scarves streaming out behind, guns slung over the shoulder. If this isn't sport, then it can only be described as du cin?. Even the most profoundly deaf boar will have had ample chance to head for the sanctuary of the National Park. Perhaps tired of these theatrics, an increasing number of young hunters are adopting a different fantasy and going solo with bow and arrow.
Other weapons include nets, for those birds who try to flee the country (30,000 swallows downed last year). Or, for the stay-at-homes, lime. You must not, after all, damage the bird's tiny liver: its pât?s a speciality down here. I should also warn ramblers that leg-traps are still openly on sale-despite an EU ban.
"It's an instinct, deeply ingrained," Andr?houts above the Jeep's engine. "It goes to the core of all Frenchmen." "It's something we are born with," the mayor affirms. "We know, from the cradle, how it is." How do the non-hunting 97 per cent stifle this inborn instinct, I wonder. All the people I am with are of an age to remember the occupation, so I ask what happened in 1940. They don't understand the question. Surely the Germans did not allow you to keep guns? "Oh. We did a deal." With the Germans? "No, no with the maquis-we told them: none of your resistance nonsense. That way we avoid house searches." And the deal? "In return we promised not to send anonymous letters to the Germans."
Two or three of our number are dropped strategically by the roadside. The rest of us walk through the woods to the places we've been allotted. Andr?nd I share a bush down by the stream on the edge of a glade. Our colleagues are placed carefully around us: the skill of the hunt lies in this lengthily discussed, complex positioning.
This is what the beers and whiskies were about last night. La strat?e- essential if 12 men armed to the teeth are to avoid shooting each other. I wonder about the chaps on the road. "What happens if a boar breaks cover just as a car's coming?" "It's bad luck," shrugs Andr?"For the people in the car."
Only later do I realise the full importance of each man's position. The essential difference between French and English hunting is that in France it is done for food. Deer, boar, rabbit, snipe (uneatables like the fox, down here, are left for a professional to snare). At the end of the hunt, the meat will be weighed in the public square and each hunter will receive a share according to where he stood when the beast was killed. Many violent arguments take place over who fired the fatal shot. These often ugly scenes are another reason why the younger generation prefers to hunt solo.
Meanwhile we wait. We have to stay in this spot all morning. Andr?ells me it's only the people who move from their post who have "accidents." But the alternative seems to be death by boredom: what was all that stuff about passion? Danger? Don't believe any of that wild boar nonsense: what we are actually waiting for is a semi-domesticated hybrid, a managed cross between the friendly farmyard sow and her wild cousin. But perhaps staying in the same place all day is easier on those rheumatic joints. I ask whether hunt protesters exist here. Andr?aughs and repeats, as if I have a learning disability, that hunting is the right of every Frenchman... a legacy of that ultimate and forming moment in modern French life, the Revolution. Even highly educated people have told me this. So far I have been too polite to point out that while it was Robespierre's intention, in August 1789, to open up hunting for the masses, he was humiliatingly defeated in the National Assembly. The aristocrat, the Count Mirabeau, carried the vote and kept hunting firmly on the estates of the landowners. Apparently history teachers do not tell their citoyen pupils that. Hunting was made a right of every (male) citizen only long after the Revolution was over and another king was on the throne of France. The present free-for-all came into being as recently as 1964, when the entirely aristocratic Val? Giscard d'Estaing passed a law forbidding anyone who owns less than 60 hectares (150 acres) from preventing a hunter walking across his land. Those mind-numbing double-negatives. But it's that law of 1964, nothing to do with the Revolution, which means I have to listen to some poor beast being pumped full of lead down in my orchard.
By noon there is still no sight of a boar, so that other primal instinct of all Frenchmen-the desire to eat-takes precedence. After a series of shouted commands to ensure that nobody mistakes us for the long-awaited feral pig, we all break cover and troop back up the hill to the Jeeps there to eat our pât?sausage and cheese, washed down by various non-appellation wines and other home-brews.
A week earlier, in Montpellier, I had been invited to a dinner of a rather grander kind. I was seated opposite a distinguished professor of medicine, a very enthusiastic hunter, so I asked him to explain the appeal. Ritually we did a dance around the Revolution Thing and then the Innate Instinct, Core of All Frenchmen Thing. Eventually, however, when he saw that this appeal to my finer feelings was not having the desired effect, he came up with a suitably cynical addition: hunting will be safe in France as long as there is la chasse presidentielle. Like any other monarch, French presidents have a private hunting domain with all attendant privileges. At this point I metaphorically threw up my hands in horror and asked how this squared with the Citoyen Thing. He contemplated his wine glass deeply, and, perhaps drawing inspiration from the colour of its contents, said: "Actually, I just like to kill." I looked round for the scowls of disapproval, but there were none: hypocritical political correctness is a non-starter in France. "There is something about death, about killing, which is very pleasing. It is, after all, entirely natural." "The male has, perhaps, two great passions," somebody down the table ventured: "Creating life and ending it." Nobody disagreed, and I was reminded of a conversation with a lively and beautiful art student who told me she goes regularly to the bullfights in Nîmes (which have seen a huge rise in popularity these last few years) precisely because she gets a high witnessing death.
So I asked the table had they heard of the studies on the physiology of a hunted animal. They hadn't, but my question did awaken something. Finally one of the men, an avowed non-hunter though he agreed absolutely with this killing instinct business, said that he had been intrigued by television reports on English hunt protesters. "You know," he said, "I find them risible." Since there was a general nodding round the table, I wondered if he could elaborate: "To see them dressed up in their commando gear, doing all those things, risking prison even-for the sake of a fox!" "A fox can be sweet," agreed one of the women, "but at the end of the day it's just a fox. A beast." That dismissive shrug. Another person added: "It is not for a man to be sensitive about animals." I had heard something similar on the radio: an apparently serious and popular journalist saying that the concept of gentleness does not go with being male. "Un homme doux n'est pas quelque chose souhaitable." Not something to be wished. At this extremely civilised dinner of right-minded people the consensus was the same: compassion is not male. It is sentimental. Foolish. "Du Brigitte Bardot." The worst insult. I was ignored for the rest of the evening.
Several hours later, as we all took our leave, I was still reeling. Not only do they think we are completely beyond the pale for having any feeling for non-humans, they actually think it wrong. As the ladies were helped into their fur coats I found myself trying to translate "It takes 40 dumb animals to make this coat, but only one dumb animal to wear it": but it doesn't work in French.
