Foxhunting it is, but not with horse and hound, not with red coats, horns, and tally ho! This is a very French, mountainy way of dealing with the animal - on skis and with shotgun. There is something almost comical in the methods - for example a trail is laid in the snow by dragging a bag steeped overnight in rabbit droppings along a 10-kilometre trail and then ambushing and shooting any renard that comes along. It's an old custom in the Department of HautesPyrenees and specifically in this case in the valley d'Aure. It is not only original, says the hunting magazine, but effective. First of all you need a skier of experience to lay a credible trail, for it's not a question of sailing down a skislope but of winding in and out of all trails. There are other drags suggested, but the best, says this article, is definitely that of steeped rabbit droppings which gives off an odour near enough to rabbit urine.
A sunny day is good, for foxes are out in numbers knowing that other creatures will be making the most of some sun. The trail-layer skis along behind his companions, taking a winding course, as a wild animal might well do. They find, after 10-kilometres or so, a gully and try to make sure that the wind will not carry their human smell in the direction of an approaching fox. It is better, we are solemnly told, to be seen by the fox than for him to get scent of them. The wait can be long. And the hunters all try to get a vantage point about 20 metres from the trail, be it behind a rock or up in a tree. And there is a picture of a chap in the shade of a fir tree holding up a fox by the hind legs, snow all around. Now hunting in the snow is normally not approved of, with some exceptions, but this winter the Prefet of the Department authorised the hunting of boar, rabbit, fox and wood pigeon.
And when we are on fox; a couple of answers came in to a question tentatively posed here a while ago. Does anyone ever eat fox? Is it really, as in Oscar Wilde's epigram; "uneatable"? Arthur Reynolds often went off with the late Gerrit van Gelderen on those journeys which brought such brilliant nature films to RTE. Gerrit said that when the Nazis took him into forced labour as a youth, they were so hungry they set traps and often ate fox stew. And Joan Moore, Mooresfort, Lattin, Tipperary writes that La- rousse Gastronomique, while ranking fox as vermin, says of its flesh that it is very tough and with an extremely unpleasant "wild" taste, is however, sometimes eaten, after the animal has been skinned and the flesh soaked in running or boiling water. Thanks for that contribution. Anyone here ever tried it? Y