Well, its funny how hunting season always starts on a Sunday, as usual for the first day of hunting we didn’t bag anything, we never have, the hunt has been going for nearly 200 years in this village and nothing has ever been caught on the first day, mind you no-one really tries, its usually just an excuse for a lunch out in the chateau grounds.
My day started at 5am getting breakfast ready for the city nobs, afterwards everybody started assembling outside in front of the chateau when at 7am M. Latapie officially signaled the start by blowing his hunting horn, the old horn is a very strange twisted thing and sounds rather like an elephant with a sneezing fit, this sent the dogs into a wild barking frenzy.
We then proceeded in our 4x4s across the fields to the forest where the dogs were then taken to one end and let loose, the idea is that the dogs run through and flush anything out. The dogs are muzzled so as not to attack anything or anyone. M Latapie blows his horn again signaling the start of the hunt and the dogs are sent through the forest towards him and all the guys with guns who are lying in wait at the other end of the forest ready to shoot anything that comes out.
One of the city nobs shot three trees, “they moved” he claimed, and another got lost for two hours in the forest, apparently when he’d lost sight of the main group, he decided to stay put as he was worried he might get shot if he moved around (probably the best thing he could have done), he waited until he heard the horn being blown signaling the end of the hunt and tried making his way towards where he thought the noise had come from only to find he was back on the opposite side of the forest, we heard him blowing his whistle so we found him before the feast was served.
Lunch was served on large tressle tables at 2pm, the villagers wives appeared with piles of food, enough to feed a small country and we supplied the wine. It’s something which the whole of the village takes part in and is really just a good excuse for a social gathering and a piss up.
5;30pm in the afternoon and we’re all saying our farewells
“Next week my boy” says M. Daleas “ we’ll try again next week”.