While we’re on the subject of la rentrée, it might be worth pointing out that it’s not just the government, schools and social clubs that are starting up again after the summer. The chasse is back in town (well, the countryside hopefully).

In case you don’t know, the chasse is the hunt and it’s a very big thing here in rural France. In total, the country has about five million holders of hunting licences, about 20% of whom are active.

So before long the tranquility of a Sunday in la France profonde is quite likely to be shattered by whistles, shouts, hunting horns, the baying of hounds and the occasional crack of gunfire. Sometimes sounding alarmingly close to the other side of your garden wall.

Sometimes actually being alarmingly close to the other side of your garden wall.

I would never contemplate going out myself with the sole aim of taking an animal’s life, but in truth I’m quite ambivalent about the ‘morality’ of hunting. It’s a fact of life in rural France and, as an outsider, it certainly won’t help your efforts to integrate with the local community if you start banging on about animal rights, or become a hunt saboteur.

Signs reading ‘Chasse Gardée’ are a common sight along the hedgerows out in the countryside, although they aren’t usually as riddled with bullet holes as this specimen. It could indicate a private hunting ground, but much more commonly it means, in effect, ‘keep out’. By and large, the local farmers aren’t too keen on having the hunt and all its paraphernalia rampaging through their crops or frightening the sheep.

There again, they’re not too keen on sangliers (wild boars) in particular doing the same thing either. It is a valid point (to me, at any rate) that the chasse contributes to keeping numbers under control. During Covid restrictions, hunting was not permitted, with the result that sanglier numbers boomed and, unchecked (wild boars can’t read – not even Chasse Gardée signs), they did a considerable amount of damage to crops and livestock.

They also cause about 30,000 road accidents in France every year. It’s not unusual to see a wild boar trotting along the side of the road. They can weigh up to 150 kilograms, so if they take against you, your vehicle will know all about it.

And so will you.

As it happens, one of the stalwarts of Faire-Le-Dodo (87)’s chasse is a resident of Tranquility Base. M Encolaire is a celib (unmarried and always has been) with an accent that even the other native French speakers find virtually impenetrable. He’s harmless enough – unless you’re a sanglier, I suppose – but during the hunting season he does have a tendency to turn up on our doorstep with a big grin and a bloodstained carrier bag containing a very large lump of raw meat, usually a fillet of wild boar or cerf (venison).

Earlier this year, he surpassed himself by bringing us an entire haunch of cerf. Thoughtfully, he had left the lower leg and hoof attached too. It would never have fitted into our oven – it was even too big for the freezer.

We managed to give it away to a couple who were about to host a barbecue for a group of bikers. I’m assuming they cooked it first, but…..you know, bikers.