Is Thursday really "the most accident-prone day"? Caution
During a trip to the Loiret on Monday January 9, the Secretary of State for Ecology Bérangère Couillard announced the measures of the 2023 hunting safety plan. The objective? “The commitment to zero accidents”. Among the measures, alcohol and drugs were banned during the hunt and an application was created to facilitate the sharing of spaces. “Hunting declarations will be mandatory from September 2023,” said the state secretary for ecology.
But one measure does not appear in the plan, that of banning a day’s hunting – requested by many NGOs. This time it will not be recorded. But Bérengère Couillard defends himself: “Nothing says that Sunday is the day most prone to accidents. Currently, without you explaining it to me, Thursdays are the most bumpy.”
However, the figures used by the Secretary of State are based solely on the number of fatalities, excluding other accidents. 20 minutes questioned the association “One day, a hunter”, founded by friends of Morgan Keane, killed by a hunter in 2020. They denounce the government’s misuse of statistics.
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Last September, following the petition published by the “Un jour, un chasseur” association, the Senate asked the economic affairs and law commissions for a joint monitoring mission. In the resulting report, 30 measures were proposed, in particular by requiring hunting license examinations or the establishment of an annual medical certificate for hunters.
According to the Senate report and according to data from the French Biodiversity Office (OFB), “the number of hunting accidents has decreased by 46% and the number of deaths by 74%”. However, this number needs to be put into perspective. Again according to the report, “more than two-thirds of accidents derive from serious faults that violate basic safety standards. Added to this are about a hundred accidents a year, namely shootings against vehicles or houses, which could have had dramatic consequences, and shootings against pets or livestock”.
Different visions
It is here that the break between the visions of the association “Un jour, un chasseur” and that of the government is played out. The anti-hunting association uses a first graph that looks at the number of injuries per day of the week, adding up all the game. On this graph, the observation is clear: almost half (46%) of hunting accidents take place on Sundays, against 25% on Saturdays, or 71% of accidents that take place over the weekend. According to these figures, Thursday accounts for 7% of accidents.
Conversely, to estimate that Sunday is not the most accident-prone, Secretary of State Bérangère Couillard takes into account the following graph which focuses on the distribution of non-hunter victims per day, based on data from the French Biodiversity Office (OFB).
Little differences
“Contrary to what one might think, we don’t find this overrepresentation in injuries involving non-hunters, which are spread across the entire week with no marked peaks on Wednesdays or weekends. These statistics do not substantiate calls to stop hunting during these times,” the report said.
On these data, in fact, there are no major differences between the different hunting days. Thursday remains the most injury-prone day with 13% of injuries, closely followed by Monday, Wednesday and Sunday (12% each). However, using these figures to demonstrate a higher accident rate is not revealing given the small differences between days.
Injuries not considered
For the association “Un jour, un chasseur”, interviewed by 20 minutes, the use of this graphic is not legitimate. “These numbers are ridiculous. It only affects dead non-hunters,” the organization says indignantly. However, there are not only dead, but also wounded. “There are also violations of private property, danger to the lives of others, failure to comply with safety regulations, killing of pets”, adds the association.
For several months, the collective has been working on another methodology for listing the number of accidents. “As soon as a press article reports an accident, we count and classify the facts,” explains the volunteer interviewed. “Accidents mostly happen on Sundays,” she observes thanks to her press review. Thus, the association has asked (and still asks) for a ban on hunting for two days, Wednesday and Sunday.
“The best way to ruin the country”
But the association “Un jour, un chasseur” is not the only one fighting to have this measure adopted. Neighbor 20 minutes, spokesman for the Association for the protection of wild animals (Aspas) Richard Holding agreed with the same conclusion: hunting on Sundays must be prohibited. “Half of recorded hunting accidents occur on this day.”
On the contrary, it is out of the question to resolve this ban for Willy Schraen, president of the National Federation of Hunters (FNC). “I don’t want to hear about the cessation of Sunday hunting, not even its experimentation in the territories. That would be the best way to mess up the country,” he growled into our microphone.
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