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American in Paris |
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"LE MONSTRE" Le Cochon Terrible de Cruchy Has killed many hunters & ravaged orchards, gardens and courtyards Do not approach while carrying apples. |
Tis the season to be wary
of hunters & their quarry
By KENNETH DREYFACK
of TheColumnists.com
This is the last weekend you can stroll serenely through the woods around here. Starting next Saturday, until sometime in February, it’s hunting season. That means you’ll need to keep on your toes constantly with all the carbines popping left and right. As you advance, groups of armed men huddled in the undergrowth, will be scowling at you for disturbing their carefully-prepared strategems.
The Burgundy countryside that lies between the wine-growing regions of Chablis to the north and Beaune and Macon to the south is rich in game. The rolling hills and deciduous forests, interspersed with farms, teem with deer, hare, fox, various fowl and, above all, wild boar.
There are so many of these somewhat fearful-looking creatures wandering through the Burgundy forests that the authorities in charge of such things here in France periodically organize off-season campaigns to diminish the boar population. During these so-called ‘administrative sweeps,’ dozens of local hunters are enlisted and, under the supervision of forest rangers, move as a phalanx through the forest, shooting the oldest, slowest and most feeble members of the boar population they encounter. I’m told these sweeps can yield 40 or 50 animals at a time.
If you’ve never seen a wild boar, imagine a pig with legs about twice as long as they should be, and a body covered with thick, bristly black or brown hair. Slightly curved tusks, about nine inches long, protrude downward from the edges of their mouths. They travel mostly in families, with a half dozen children trailing their parents as they trot briskly through the woods. Mom and Dad can be pretty big, weighing in at 300 or even 400 pounds each.
The wild boars are so plentiful here that my wife and I have often run into families on our walks through the local forests, particularly towards the end of the day as they finish their daytime sleep and start their noctural search for food.
Last year around this time, a family or two of wild boars found their way into our yard while we were away for a few days, apparently attracted by the nearly-ripe apples hanging from a small tree. We found the tree nearly horizontal, all the apples save one gone, and a large patch of the grass worked over as if someone had been through with a roto-tiller.
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Bring more apples! And some good Chablis!" |
The boars are fond of worms, Old Man Miguet told us. The only way to keep them out of your garden is to put boards around the bottom of the fencing and secure them solidly with stakes driven well into the ground, he says. If they can get their snouts under the fencing, he advised, they'll get in. After he told me how to keep the boars out, Old Man Miguet, who just celebrated his 86th birthday a few weeks ago, lent me a smallish sledge hammer to drive in those stakes. He must know what he's talking about. For one thing, the boars never get into his flowers or vegetables. For another, he's been around this place for about 50 years now, so if he doesn't know, who does?
While farmers and gardeners dislike the wild boars, for obvious reasons, our friend and neighbor Roger, who refers to the boars (sangliers) as pigs (cochons), explains that they are quite harmless, as far as people are concerned. They are, he says, really intelligent, which is part of the challenge of hunting them. Yves, his brother-in-law, claims their sense of smell is powerful enough to pick up odors from miles away (which would explain how they managed to find nine apples in a yard with no other interesting fodder).
Yves used to raise them in a field just on the other side of the village. The wild boars are easy to domesticate, he says. He had a string of babies following him around like ducklings. He grew rather fond of one sow in particular, but had no choice but to set the entire herd free when someone squealed to the local authorities, who reminded Yves that, for reasons that neither he nor they could imagine, it was illegal to try to raise wild boars.
A few months ago, Roger found a baby which, apparently separated from its family, was wandering aimlessly through the streets of Cruchy. Knowing of Yves’ success, Roger thought he’d try to do the same. But the young boar died a few weeks later; nobody knows exactly why.
Roger and Yves and just about all the other men in this area organize much of their lives around hunting season. Once the season has begun, they’ll spend just about every Saturday and Sunday out in the woods, stalking the boars along with the plentiful deer. On a good day, they can come back with six, eight or even 10 animals.
They usually also come back with a few torn up dogs, too. It seems that the wild boars, while not menacing to people, don’t care much at all for the canine race, especially packs of dogs who roust them from their hiding places in the woods. That’s why all the hunters have health insurance for their dogs, which covers the cost of having the veterinarian sew them back up after they’ve been gored.
I’ve never hunted anything, anywhere. In fact, I’ve always been opposed to the whole idea. I viewed hunting as a excuse for grown men to play act that they were back in some primeval wilderness in order to justify their savage killing of cuddly wild animals and birds (In addition to transforming what ought to be bucolic walks through the forest into stressful navigation through combat zones).
As a New Yorker, then Chicagoan, then Parisian, it was easy to dismiss the whole thing as just another manifestation of macho ego-building. But here in Cruchy, there are no insurance salesmen, bank tellers or commuters who need to disguise themselves as quasi-military he-men in order to assert their virility. And as we all get together during the long summer evenings to enjoy mouth-wateringly delicious wild boar stew and a few bottles of good red wine, it’s not so easy to dismiss hunters in a smug, pat phrase.
©2003 by Kenneth Dreyfack.
The illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895
Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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