Eleven hunters killed last season, accidents remain on the rise

After reaching a historic low two years ago , the number of fatal hunting accidents is on the rise again in the 2024-2025 season, with "11 hunter deaths compared to six in the two previous years" , according to the annual report from the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB), consulted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Friday, July 18.

"The general trend over twenty-five years remains very good," with a reduction of more than half in accidents, "but we must remain vigilant," OFB director general Olivier Thibault told AFP. "We have made enormous progress with hunters, training is working well, but the trend could start to rise again," he warned, citing three points of vigilance: errors in handling the weapon; the failure to take into account the shooting environment; the increase in the number of hunts organized urgently to protect crops from attacks by wild boar or deer.

For the third consecutive season, only hunters were fatally shot, each time during a big game hunt, but 16 non-hunters were injured, three of them seriously, compared to none the previous year. Including non-fatal cases, a total of 100 accidents were recorded in this annual report, compiled after investigation of each case by OFB agents.

This is also a new increase after a historic low of 78 accidents during the 2022-2023 season. But this rebound "does not call into question the underlying structural trend: hunting is now half as accident-prone as it was twenty years ago," says the office, responsible for training hunters and issuing hunting permits. From 2001 to 2010, the number of accidents fluctuated between 146 and 203 per season, including 15 to 31 fatalities.

Last year, "of the eleven fatal accidents, five were due to problems with handling weapons, for example reloading near the car or not paying attention once at the firing position," explains the OFB's director general.

Then, "failure to consider the environment accounts for a third of non-fatal accidents," he says, citing the example of shooting at a hedge or not respecting legal shooting angles. "You have to keep in mind that when you shoot big game, a bullet can be fatal at 1,500 meters away, so you have to be aware of where it's going to land," adds Mr. Thibault.

The third point of vigilance concerns the hunts around the fields: "We are asking hunters to regulate [the game population] more and more to limit the damage" to the crops, mainly that caused by wild boars. "These are increasingly requests for emergency intervention; it is not the usual, well-calibrated hunt on familiar ground," the senior official emphasizes. Three of the 11 deaths occurred in such a setting.

To maintain the underlying downward trend, "lifelong training and retraining" are essential, insists Olivier Thibault. Since 2020, hunters, the oldest of whom obtained their license without a practical exam, have been subject to ten-year training. "Everyone will have to have passed it by 2030," says the head of the OFB, welcoming the fact that "44% of active hunters have completed the ten-year training." "This shows that the federations are playing the game," he says.