Thursday, "the most accident-prone day" of hunting? Caution

• Earlier this week, the Secretary of State for Ecology Bérangère Couillard presented the long-awaited Hunting Safety Plan.

  Its goal ?

  “Striving towards zero accidents”.

• But one measure was noticed by its absence, that of the ban on a day of hunting.

  Sunday is particularly requested by associations and NGOs.

  It would be, according to them, the most accident-prone day.

• According to Bérangère Couillard, this day would actually be Thursday.

During a trip to the Loiret, Monday, January 9, the Secretary of State for Ecology Bérangère Couillard announced the measures of the 2023 Hunting Safety Plan. The objective?

“Striving towards zero accidents”.

Among the measures, alcohol and narcotics were banned during the hunt and an application was created to facilitate the sharing of spaces.

“Hunting declarations will be mandatory from September 2023,” said the Secretary of State for Ecology.

But one measure does not appear in the plan, that of banning one day of hunting - requested by many NGOs.

She will not be registered this time.

But Bérengère Couillard defends herself: “Nothing says that Sunday is the most accident-prone day.

Currently, without me explaining it, Thursday is the most accident-prone”.

However, the figures used by the Secretary of State are based solely on the number of deaths, not including other accidents.

questioned the association "One day, a hunter", founded by the friends of Morgan Keane, shot by a hunter in 2020. They denounce the misuse of statistics by the government.

FAKE OFF

Last September, following the petition published by the association “Un jour, un chasseur”, the Senate requested a joint monitoring mission from the economic affairs and law committees.

In the resulting report, 30 measures were proposed, notably asking for the examination of the hunting license or the establishment of an annual medical certificate for hunters.

According to the Senate report and according to figures from the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB), "the number of hunting accidents has fallen by 46% and the number of deaths by 74%".

However, this number needs to be put into perspective.

Also according to the report, “more than two thirds of accidents result from serious faults infringing basic safety rules.

Added to this are around a hundred incidents per year, that is to say shootings at vehicles or houses, which could have had dramatic consequences, and shootings at domestic or livestock animals”.

Different visions

It is here that the break between the visions of the association “Un jour, un chasseur” and that of the government is played out.

The association opposed to hunting uses a first graph which looks at the number of accidents per day of the week, all game combined.

On this diagram, the observation is clear: almost half (46%) of hunting accidents take place on Sunday, against 25% on Saturday, or 71% of accidents taking place at the weekend.

According to these figures, Thursday accounts for 7% of accidents.

Opposite, to estimate that Sunday is not the most accident-prone, Secretary of State Bérangère Couillard takes into account the following graph which focuses on the distribution of non-hunter victims per day, on data from the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB).

Small differences

“Contrary to what one might think, we do not find this overrepresentation in accidents involving non-hunters, which are spread over the whole week with no marked peak on Wednesdays or weekends.

These statistics do not corroborate the requests to stop hunting during these periods, ”says the report.

On these figures, in fact, no big difference is to be noticed between the different hunting days.

Thursday remains the most accident-prone day with 13% of accidents, followed very closely by Monday, Wednesday and Sunday (12% each).

However, using these figures to demonstrate a higher rate of accidents is not revealing given the small differences between days.

Injuries not considered

For the association "One day, a hunter", questioned by

, the use of this graph is not legitimate.

“These numbers are ridiculous.

It only concerns dead non-hunters,” the organization says indignantly.

However, there are not only deaths, but also injuries.

"There are also violations of private property, endangering the lives of others, non-compliance with safety rules, pets killed," adds the association.

For several months, the collective has been working on another methodology to list the number of accidents.

“As soon as a press article reports an accident, we count and classify the facts,” explains the volunteer interviewed.

"Accidents mostly take place on Sundays", she notes thanks to her press review.

Thus, the association asked (and still asks) the ban on hunting on two days, Wednesday and Sunday.

“The best way to mess up the country”

However, the association “Un jour, un chasseur” is not the only one fighting to have this measure adopted.

Near

, the spokesperson for the Association for the Protection of Wild Animals (Aspas) Richard Holding agreed with the same observation: hunting must be banned on Sundays.

"Half of recorded hunting accidents take place on this day."

On the contrary, it is out of the question to resolve to this ban for Willy Schraen, president of the National Federation of Hunters (FNC).

“I don't want to hear about the cessation of hunting on Sundays, not even its experimentation in territories.

It would be the best way to mess up the country, ”he growled at our microphone.

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