In the Aude* department there are about as many
wild boar as people so it is not surprising that it is so much part of our
lives.
The wild boar do serious damage in
the vineyards starting with nibbling the buds in the spring, digging holes,
ploughing up the soil and perhaps the worst damage is eating the ripe grapes
just before harvest.
A hungry wild boar will stop at nothing to get to the juicy ripe grapes!
I unfortunately have been a victim of the latter!
The wild boar had a serious party in my muscat vineyard in Maury in 2011.
Wild boar are particularly partial to the sweet muscat grape. We
arrived in Maury to put up the electric fence only to find that the wild boar
had devoured the whole vineyard the night before. They hoover off the
ripe grapes and leave the stalks on the vines or if the grapes aren't quite
ripe enough they will just throw them on the floor.
We do what we can to protect our vineyards.
We put up electric fences on about half of our vineyards and a permanent
fence as well as the electric fence on vineyards that are isolated in the
middle of the garrigue. We have been told that scattering human hair helps keep
the wild boar at bay but we haven't tried that yet!
This year there was less damage in the vineyards as
acorns were plentiful which kept the wild boar in the wooded areas.
It is virtually impossible to insure against wild
boar damage even though it can lead to loss of harvest. The Fédération de
Chasse partly compensates growers and they also help to finance fences.
On the other hand they put down grain to attract wild boar and a well fed
wild boar will produce more young. So it's rather a vicious circle.
Wild boar do have other uses apart from meat and
hairbrushes. In November the skin of a wild boar was used to cover up a speed camera on the
D116 between Prades and Perpignan. The
gendarmerie concluded that it was probably the work of a hunter and closed the
enquiry.
Wild boar hunting goes back to the Ancient Greeks
and in Roman times a typical hunt involved
surrounding a given area with large nets, then flushing the boar with dogs and
immobilising it with smaller nets. The animal would then be dispatched with a
short spear with a pair of barbs at the base of the blade.
So things haven't really changed
here in Tuchan. Hunters are posted in a circle of up to about 10 km radius and
dogs are used to flush out the wild boar. Spears have been replaced by
rifles.
In Tuchan the hunt is very much a
social scene with meetings 3 times a week from September to January and
hunting lasting the best part of the day
I’m glad to say there are also a
couple of women hunters too!
In the Aude department where we live around 18 000
wild boar will be hunted this year.
And that brings me rather nicely to our favourite
local dish – wild boar stew !
*Aude department
2370 square miles
Population 360
000
Density 150
people per square mile
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