25. La Chasse
Le Perche is in the Eure-et-Loire Département. It is an ancient name like Berry or Gâtinais, where Courances is located. M. Bourgeois’s Buveurs d’Air (lit, “air/scent drinkers”) is in the small farm village of Thiron-Gardais, a bit under two hours away by car.
We have made arrangements with him by phone. Since he comes so highly regarded, we don’t feel it necessary to inspect the place. He has described his routines. Mr. Best Dog Trainer Around doesn’t talk a lot. He’s just back from an important dog event in Hungary. He’s talked to dogs so much I suspect talking to people is something he’s forgotten how to do. I picked up that same sense when I arrive and meet him. We humans have our own flaire (scent).
It is a spiffy facility. He shows me where Marcel will stay. It’s outdoors and the weather is getting cold at night. Other than that, things look good. His training stint will be two weeks. I pass through le Croix du Perche as I head back and notice a beautiful small church. I will stop by when I return to get him.
Back home I am working on my hunting license. All the sample questions are online. This is the written part. Someone came up with the clever idea to make a test about hunting also a test to see if you are the best ornithologist, ecologist, all-around expert on flora and fauna in France. This takes on into a vocabulary terrain I suspect most average French citizens would struggle with.
When the x type deer loses its horns, how long before the next set appear? Can you fire a gun over sea water in y conditions. How many litters can a lynx have in a year? What breed of elk are found in France? These predominate over, can you fire a shotgun toward power lines? At what angle can you fire if shooting hogs on a line, with gun wielding neighbors on right and left? What’s the difference between buckshot and double 00? How many Départments in France allow air-propelled guns for shooting rats and other vermin?
This is all very cleverly thought through. There are on the order of 350 such questions, I kid you not. For the exam, you only get twenty, chosen at random. There is one question—usually fairly obvious—about gun safety that if you miss, the exam is forfeit. The online format is perfect. You can test yourself as many times as you like with an exam just like the one you must take at the formal training and license facility. The closest one to me is in the Seine-et-Marne Department, about twenty minutes to the northeast, beyond Melun. I sit in my mezzanine office and enjoy the challenge for a half-hour each day. My paper-back copy of the questions arrives in the post.
We are having a cold snap and nighttime temperatures are down into the low thirties. Marcel’s outdoor sleeping place arises in my mind’s eye, a concrete cell in French Siberia. Elizabeth is also worried. She insists I call M. Dresseur. He answers his cell phone in his usual brusque manner, as if he were in the middle of negotiating a 5M deal between France and Belarus. Will Marcel be OK? It’s pretty cold at night.
He’s a hunting dog. Chien de chasse. He’ll get used to it.
End of call.
I go back to taking the sample test and studying the video that came with the book. It shows how the practical part of the exam will unfold. You also can go up for some face-to-face instruction. They have the guns that are part of the exam when the time comes to take it. In the weeks before the actual formal exam, there are several weekends where groups are walked through the practical exam.
I have been hunting since a boy, in rural Western North Carolina. We shot dove in fields around my boarding school. I have shot migrating and local ducks from a blind and boat in South Carolina. Was invited to some exciting shoots in Perthshire in Scotland when I lived in St. Andrews.
All that said, I genuinely like the idea of this kind of thorough training, as it socializes the would-be hunters to the basics, and lets one learn alongside others. I have never breached a shotgun in the way required for the French exam, and I have not shot semi-automatic shotguns in the field as a rule, though they are very popular. They make you break down and put back together these weapons, as well as a basic bolt-action rifle typically used for hog and deer hunts. This is where you learn about proper minimal angles of shooting for driven hogs and deer, which is the usual way departmentally organized clearing exercises—chasse en cours—take place.
The day for the exam, written and practical, arrives. We’ve gotten to know each other, text-takers and instructors. I did not want to repeat the rookie experience I had at a field trial. I didn’t. I passed the written exam with the required 80% correct. The practical exam was a bit harder, but I think the examiner knew may age and history of hunting made me an acceptable pass. That this is not a cakewalk is proven by the fact that routinely only 65% pass on the first go. If you fail, you study and come back, now more familiar with the process. I like my shiny embossed permis de chasse. Locals in our village who know about these things are impressed that I passed on my first trial.
I have left my own shotguns at home, but that’s a nice excuse to find a suitable 20 gauge to augment my array of “fowling pieces.” There is a nice gun shop south of Fontainebleau. “Might as well have the best” comes to mind. Instead, I find a moderately priced brand I have seen promoted. FAIR. Fabricio armi Italiano Rimini. Nice etchings on the face. Looks like Marcel at point. I produce my hunting permit, pay, and we are off. I’ve bought shells for various weight birds we will be shooting, and some slugs in case the afternoon hunts come into play.
Speaking of Marcel. When it was time for him to come home, I was happy to get our buddy back. Elizabeth really missed him. He loves curling up at her feet in our cozy living room, especially in this colder season. And she loves it too.
M. Bourgeois is in the field when I arrive, and he signals for me to come. He has said that his favorite dogs to work with are English pointers, Braque d’Anglais. They can take a lot of discipline, and it doesn’t bother them. He finds Marcel’s breed a challenge. They work the field very well. But they are also a challenging combination of stubborn and sensitive. He tells me Marcel has done fine. But he wants me to be aware of this.
As I watch, he gives Marcel a command. Marcel reacts a bit slowly. He is stropped once on his rump. Then he gets a huge hug. I am to do the same thing. They need discipline, he says. They are stubborn and a bit independent. Tétu (headstrong). But their spirit can’t be crushed. Immediate affection is required.
Why does that sound a lot like life?
This little exercise came prior to settling the bill and leaving. Before that, he had me stand upwind so he could show me Marcel at work in the field. Marcel was not to know I was there. There is something touching about seeing the dog you love, who operates always in your orbit, step out of that and be himself. He is Marcel. His own dog. He is doing what God gave him to do, that rises from within him naturally, now just more disciplined, chiseled, crisp and efficient. Immanuel put him through his paces and is done. He signals for me, and I step into the field.
With his now customary squeal and whine, at the sight of me and those he loves, he runs to me across the field. This is the hug part we all long for in life.
He’s in his car now, his mobile home, going back to see his maman. Now it’s her turn to give the mom’s version of a squeal and a whine. Followed by a hug.
“You’re home, Marcel,” she says. “I have a treat for you.”