France: With 11 hunters killed in the 2024-2025 season, hunting accidents are on the rise again.

After a historic low of 78 accidents in the 2022-2023 season, 100 accidents were recorded last season.
After reaching a historic low, the number of fatal hunting accidents is on the rise again in the 2024-2025 season, with "11 hunter deaths compared to 6 in the previous two years," according to the annual report from the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB). "The overall trend over 25 years remains very good," with a decrease of more than half in accidents, "but we must remain vigilant," said OFB Director General Olivier Thibault.
"We have made enormous progress with hunters, training is working well, but the trend could start to increase again," he warns, citing three areas of concern: weapon handling errors, failure to take into account the shooting environment, and the increase in emergency hunts organized to protect crops from attacks by wild boar or deer.
Sixteen non-hunters injuredFor the third season in a row, only hunters were fatally shot, each time during a big game hunt, but 16 non-hunters were also injured, three of them seriously, compared to zero the previous year. Adding non-fatal cases, a total of 100 accidents were recorded in this annual report, established 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 20 years ago," says the office, which is responsible for training hunters and issuing hunting licenses. From 2001 to 2010, the number of accidents fluctuated between 146 and 203 per season, including 15 to 31 fatalities.
Last year, "of the 11 fatal accidents, five were due to weapon handling problems, for example, reloading near the car or not paying attention once at the firing position," explains the OFB's director general. Then, "failure to take the environment into account accounts for a third of non-fatal accidents," he says, citing the example of shooting at a hedge or not respecting legal firing angles.
Emphasize “training and retraining”"You have to keep in mind that when you shoot big game, a bullet can be lethal at 1,500 m away, so you have to be aware of where it's going to land," adds Olivier Thibault.
The third point of vigilance concerns the hunts around the fields: "we are asking hunters to increasingly regulate (the game population, editor's note) to limit the damage" to crops, mainly that caused by wild boars. "This is increasingly a request for emergency interventions, it is not the usual, well-calibrated hunt on familiar ground," emphasizes the senior official. Three of the eleven deaths occurred in such a setting.
To maintain the underlying downward trend, "lifelong training and retraining" are key, 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 completed 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.
Le Progrès