Hunters prosecuted for not having drawn wild boars: the response of their lawyer the weekly Chassons.com newsletter
On September 28, we echoed in our hunter columns prosecuted for sparing laies in Moselle.Following this paper, the lawyer defending the hunters contacted us in order to give a right of response to this case and better understand the facts.Here is the response of Maître Savouret
" Dear Sir,
Hunter, lawyer, and regular reader of your magazine, it is with real pleasure that I allow myself to write these few lines to you following the publication of an article in your columns, which calls on my part informationwho will follow.
Indeed, I had the honor of ensuring the defense - among other colleagues - of Mosellans hunters returned to a Thionville police court on September 23, 2021, for having "spared the laies" - according to the evocative titleof your article published on September 28, 2021 recounting this case to say the least preposterous.Twelve hunters, all partners of the same hunting association to which he was criticized during this audience for having simply participated in hunting actions (during the 2016/2017 season we will appreciate in passing not without irony, judicial speed ...)With shooting instructions on the laies of more than 45 kilos.
Plus précisément, le parquet a poursuivi les malheureux Nemrods au seul motif que les statuts de leur association de chasse comportaient une clause oubliée et non appliquée prévoyant, vestige d’une époque révolue en Moselle, des restriction de tir sur les femelles sanglier de plus de 45 kilos ce qui est interdit depuis la parution du SDGC 2014/2020.Add to that the jealousy of an old partner, the zeal of an agent of the OFB (for which I will have the delicacy not to deliver the obvious reasons of his relentlessness here) and you get four years of prosecution for"contraventional" facts, that is to say at the bottom of the criminal scale.
At a time when the judicial system is out of breath, some will say on the verge of implosion, devote so much time and energy to this case, surprises.Surprise undoubtedly shared by the litigantsnon-chasers present in the courtroom that day more accustomed to the tenacious image of the "bad hunter" pulling all go, that of hunters prosecuted for crushing for having spared "mothers ".She could even make this affair smile, if these twelve hunters did not risk, by the cynical play of complementary sorrows, the pure and simple withdrawal of their hunting license, the end of a life for the enthusiasts that we are.Except that they were wrongly prosecuted.This is in any case the defense thesis.
En effet, la lecture de l’article R428-2 du Code de l’environnement sur lequel repose les poursuites, seule l’association de chasse, est susceptible de voir sa responsabilité pénale engagée pour avoir conservé dans ses statuts une clause contraire au SDGC.Article R428-2 of the Environment Code aims exclusively, under the legal term of "farmer", the lessee, holder of the right to hunt, either in this case, the hunting association, legal person.
According to La Défense, partners cannot see their responsibility engaged.Surprisingly, this legal subtlety - yet of capital importance in that it would have avoided the prosecution of the partners for the benefit of the hunting association - against which the proceedings are now prescribed - does not seem to delight,Neither the prosecution nor the federation of hunters formed civil party for the occasion.Continuing hunters individually for having taken part in battered-in the run of which no instruction has been given to them-is a legal nonsense.Because finally, the latter are not responsible for their sole quality of partners of the statutes of the hunting association.
I will go further.
In Nice Piece on How To Travel as a #vegetarian https: // t.CO/YZUI3QZGHD
— Eco & Beyond Fri May 04 20:17:00 +0000 2018
The pursuit of partners reveals the meaning of the law, however strict interpretation by leading to a penalty of individual behavior guided by a hunting ethics which belongs to each-that of lifting the rifle-while the article R428-2 of theEnvironmental code condemns him, management contrary to the departmental specifications which is not the same thing.In other words, can we take up the evocative title of your article being prosecuted and convicted of having spared?Fortunately, the answer is not.The reverse would be heresy, in any event the announced death of an ethical hunt.This precious ethics in that it does with us, not "gunrs", but the heirs of a practice that only makes sense through its values.
The prosecution will maintain his request for conviction against seven of the twelve hunters cited to fine penalties against all odds..Flash of common sense, the release will be required for five of them who were not even partners during the incriminated season.This trial was above all was a formidable opportunity to explain, through the legal prism, to a president interested in this world which she seemed to ignore, that hunting is not just about "killing", and that the hunters are notnot the simple performers administrative quotas.
"Not shooting is also a hunting act".This affair inexorably leads us to worry about the threats that weigh on the future of our beautiful passion.
The mutation that begins, the assertive will of schizophrenic policies that caress animal associations with a velvet hand and hold hunters with an iron fist, erasing in this ancestral practice - with electoral reforms - any notion ofpassion, tradition and pleasure in favor of a “regulation” hunt must challenge us.The disappearance one by one of the traditional hunts under the guise of ecology - although the "objective" naturalists - so rare - agree that they have no impact on biodiversity must lead us to flawless mobilizationHunting actors to defend, this hunt that we love so much, that in love with ethics of which we are the depositaries and which we must transmit to our children.
But now, a worrying turn was taken with our involuntary complicity in this rapid business of deconstruction of our values, when, during the containment period, we were deprived of hunting but summoned to participate in battues of destruction of ESOD (Summated anagram to qualify species likely to cause damage) under penalty of having to compensate ever more damage suffered by our farmer friends.Like wasps falling into syrup, we rushed into the trap.We must admit that the temptation was great.We were all the first, happy to be able to find our forests and friends to track down the black beast that we love so much.
Blinded by our overflowing passion, we let our leaders open Pandora's box.But are we ready to abandon our status as a hunter for that, exclusive, auxiliary of the general interest? If it should not deny the public utility of hunting, because it is an argument (among so muchothers) in our favor, participation in a mission of general interest must be the accessory and not the main of our passion.As in resonance with this observation, I will finish by recalling the heavy sentence by which Madame the prosecutor began her indictment: "Here gentlemen, the custom is not law".
Admittedly, Madam Prosecutor, but if, the semantic battle may already be lost, lost, the war of values remains to be led.So let's beat to transmit to our children our customs and traditions and draw the teachings of this affair.
Let us beat to keep this freedom so beautiful, to be able to lift the rifle in passing of a wild boar, a kid and its small, or a fox without having to read again, in the columns of our ducks,that hunters were prosecuted and convicted to have simply, out of ethics or sensitivity, refused to kill everything.Verdict on November 25… ”
Jonathan Savouret, lawyer
