The boar were killed in a “battue” in which beaters drove the game towards the 82 hunters last Wednesday in the eastern Ardennes region.
Local officials said the hunters were within their rights as they had still not attained their quotas for the season of some 300 animals.
But a participant in the hunt described the scene in a report in the local Ardennais newspaper, denouncing the extent of the killings as a true “carnage” that had left him shaken.
And the president of the hunting federation for the Ardennes, Jean-Pol Gambier, said that “such an image for hunting cannot be supported, we cannot allow this kind of excess.”
He told AFP that the “exceptional” number of individuals killed was “intolerable”.
“I am overcome by this carnage, even if there is a need to regulate (numbers),” Claude Maireaux, head of a local nature protection group told AFP.
Hunters in France insist that their practice is helpful to nature and is rooted in the country's traditions, even in the face of growing protests by animal rights groups.
Please whitelist us to continue reading.
It begs the question. Just who are the “animals”?
Do not forget that there is an enormous overpopulation of “sangliers” in France that needs to be controlled. Anyone who has seen the damage caused by wild boar to farmer’s crops would understand the problem.
There’s an overpopulation of humans worldwide ‘Fed up’ and what about the damage they cause, do you think they should be killed for fun?