Gbad weather in the small town of Salleboeuf for a few days. Located away from the village, the animal shelter managed by the Touche pas à mon popotte association has lost its serenity. In question, according to its president Karine Foezon, the last hunt organized by the Municipal Approved Hunting Association (ACCA) of Salleboeuf which was held this Monday, December 30. “The shots and the sound of horns panicked the animals,” says the manager of the shelter, who lives there. Frightened by hunting dogs, a convalescing sheep fell and was injured.
Far from being a first, the episode rekindles a heated topic of discussion between the two parties and the town hall. It all started a year and a half earlier, when the refuge, created in 2014, built an extension of 3,500 m² of his land. “Until then, we had never had to complain about hunters,” admits Karine Foezon, who also insists on her good relations with many hunters who bring her wild boar abandoned by their mothers. But in January 2023, a first altercation took place when hunters approached too close to the refuge. The president files a first handrail with the Tresses gendarmerie. In December of the same year, a hunt caused disorder in the refuge. A goat jostles Karine Foezon, who comes out damaged and her morale affected.
A short-lived truce
But above all, it is the well-being of her animals that she wants us to respect. At the start of 2024, the ACCA and Touche pas à mon popotte were received by the mayor of Salleboeuf on several occasions. The secretary of the municipal association, Jérôme Videau, proposed placing men without weapons and without dogs along the fences of the refuge to prevent hunters from getting too close to the enclosures. The ACCA also undertakes to notify the shelter before each hunt, as well as the mayor and the gendarmerie. “A mark of courtesy”, for Jérôme Videau, who recalls that the only obligation is to report the holding of a search on the roads.
“It is not with joy of heart that we organize a hunt in this place”
Located in a basin, the refuge adjoins a natural watering hole which attracts wildlife, he explains. Just like the wild boars that the refuge shelters… “It is not with joy that we organize a hunt here once or twice a year,” assures the young hunter. On December 30, he claimed to have respected the agreements made at the start of the year and to have shot only in view of the number of wild boars on site. “We are thinking about pooling weapons with the surrounding communities to carry out fewer hunts, but more efficiently. We also built watchtowers to locate animals more quickly. »
Insufficient measures, judges Karine Foezon, who would like the hunts to be silent around the refuge, or prohibited otherwise. But with a general increase in the wild boar population in France, a strengthening of the rules governing hunting seems unlikely.
