Dusk, Dark and The Hunt

Cravant: Dusk

A good time to be sitting out on the patio in summer is when the light begins to change. Things happen when dusk arrives.

Just over the road from us, neighbours have bats nesting in their roof - small pipistrelles - which at a quick glance, might be mistaken for insomniac house martins, but not for long. We enjoy seeing them and their aerial agility as they swoop overhead, hunting for food.

Cravant: full moon

Night time here is pitch black. Roads in all directions are unlit including our regular route to the the outskirts of Chinon. There's the occasional spill of light from a house window, otherwise it's down to the car headlights to show the way. When it's that dark we'll have foxes out on the prowl. Deer also begin to emerge. Occasionally as we driven back home late from Chinon, we've caught their outline and glittering eye reflection in the car lights, usually off to the side, amongst the trees and vines.

Cravant is a hunting area including deer, rabbits and wild boar (sanglier). The hunt or la chasse is well organised, controlled and seasonal. Mike caught sight of a sanglier one time when he was out in the car. I've only seen a baby sanglier - piglet (porcelet) -  when I was in our local forest on a photography outing. I heard a rustling a short way off and spotted it ferreting around in the undergrowth. Piglets are very 'cute' with appealing stripes. However the parents are not and they can also be extremely dangerous. We hadn't appreciated just how dangerous until this January. We returned to Cravant to find two wine producers had had major confrontations with wild boar. One had been driving his son to school early in the morning along the forest road. A boar rushed out, collided with the car, which landed upside down in a ditch. The car was a complete right off. Miraculously everyone survived intact, although severely shocked. The boar was fine. The other wine-producer escaped with his life. Out on a hunt, a boar charged him, and smashed his arm to bits. He need major surgery and plastic surgery to repair it, and was going to take most of the year to recover. This time the boar was shot.

Cravant: a trail to the forest

We aren't part of the hunting community. But it is integral to country life so we're very much aware of it. At the beginning of May in St.Benoit Forest there is an annual festival. An all day event, which we went to once - a couple of years ago. All aspects of hunting life and equipment are represented: clothing and footwear, horses and riding, hunting dogs, rifles, food produce such as meats, sausages and patés.  There's also a hunting horn competition. The year we went there were about fifteen musicians competing. In a particular area of the forest, the judges sit in a row at a trestle table with the audience ahead of them on wooden benches. One by one individual musicians in their hunting jackets move to stand by a particular tree at the side of the audience area and slightly behind it. They turn their backs to the judges, place the hunting horn under their arms, so that the bell faces the judges and play. It is an extremely difficult instrument, as its purely breathe control and embouchure that determine the quality of the sound. We have a group of musicians who rehearse regularly in Cravant and someone else who keeps a pack of hunting hounds. So we are reminded of the hunt, either by a burst of music, or a collective howl at food times and dusk. The cycle of the hunt is seasonal as is everything else to do with food. If it's in, everyone will have it, meaning local butchers and every restaurant menu. At St. Benoit you come face to face with the reality of supply.