A trivial domestic accident? Two young hunters aged 20 and 21 died on the evening of Wednesday January 22 during a hunting trip in Saint-Fromond, in the Manche department. No gunshot involved here – as is the case in many hunting accidents – but probable carbon monoxide poisoning, according to information from the local press. An investigation was opened to determine the exact cause of their death.
Accidental tracks
“The alert was given by the families who contacted the Departmental Fire and Rescue Service when they did not see the young men return. They were discovered inanimate. specifies the public prosecutor of Coutances, Gauthier Poupeau, to West France. The two hunters were then in a “gabion”, a sort of hut sheltered from view built on the edge of the marshes, which allows them to hunt waterfowl (ducks, snipe and other geese). These gabions made of concrete are mainly found in the Normandy and Picardy regions.
According to the local press, it was by operating a motor pump – a water-sucking machine which emits carbon monoxide when it is running – in the small shelter that the two young people became poisoned. Contacted by Liberationthe Coutances public prosecutor’s office has not yet responded to our requests.
“We have accidental leads on the causes of death, the prosecutor told the press. Emergency services found them unconscious but treatment was in vain. Firstly, an examination of the body at the Saint-Lô Medical-Judicial Unit was ordered. The situation will be reassessed at the end of it.” Asked by Actu.fr, Matthieu Lehot, president of the Sauvaginiers des Marais du Cotentin et du Bessin hunting association, ensures that the use of a motor pump in a gabion is “rare and exceptional”. “The young people had to turn on a motor pump inside the gabion to evacuate the water that had flooded it,” he believes.
-Flood
Although these hunting shelters are supposed to be airtight, in winter, the Cotentin and Bessin marshes park becomes one of the largest wetlands in France: water invades the fields. “The marsh whitens, like every year, says Matthieu Lehot. And on Saint-Fromond, it is the Vire which passes above the dike. The gabion is full.” «There are parts of the marshes that are very flooded at the moment, perhaps they went to pump out the water that was in their gabion», agrees Gérard Bamas, president of the federation of Manche hunters, quoted by the French Hunter.
In the past, a major gas leak caused another gabion not far away to explode. Since then, all shelters of this type have been geolocated so that emergency services can get there more quickly. There are 560 gabions in the Manche department, as well as 6,000 waterfowl hunters out of 14,000 hunters in total.
