If he sees no inconvenience not to drink and to avoid “shooting the neighbour”, Willy Schraen is on the other hand fiercely opposed to the ban on hunting on Sundays.
Willy Schraen, president of the National Federation of Hunters, October 18, 2022. (LIONEL BONAVENTURE / AFP)
The government plans to introduce a blood alcohol offense in its future plan to make hunting more secure. The president of the National Federation of Hunters, Willy Schraen, declared himself on Tuesday, October 26 on today news post in favor of “controls when we are in hunting practice”. He assures that the hunters “self-regulate” and that “there has been no alcohol in our country for a long time, or very little, or exceptionally”.
“When we see someone who is under the influence of alcohol and who is going to start hunting, we kindly ask them to sit down, put their gun down and come back when things are better.”
Willy Schraen, President of the National Federation of Hunters
The president of the National Federation of Hunters thinks that “with 30 million hunting days every year for three or four alcohol-related accidents, hunters have long chosen. Now, to get out of the hysteria of some tenors of the extreme left who want to kill us permanently, you have to put an alcohol test, no problem”, he explains. Willy Schraen thus declares himself open to the introduction of a test on the same model as for motorists: “We believe that we can still drive a car when we have drunk a maximum of two glasses, so it is that we must be able to hold a weapon,” he explains.
The government is pushing open doors
The government also plans to generalize driven shots only when the game is at a 30 degree angle in front of the hunter. A measure that goes in the “good sense”, according to the president of the National Federation of Hunters. Willy Schraen assures that hunters “already advocate that everywhere. Clearly, you don’t shoot your neighbor, all that makes sense,” he says. For Willy Schraen, “if the State absolutely wants to break down an open door, as with alcohol, by saying that you have to shoot animals at a 30 degree angle when you are beaten, why not listen”. He explains that he is not “against” from the moment “when it is accident-prone internally by hunters”.
Willy Schraen also declares himself “open to discussions” on a limitation of hunting days. He specifies that says that “when you are at home or when you rent the right to hunt, you still have the right to do what you want in the private domain”. He thus pleads a differentiation from the “public domain”. The president of the National Federation of Hunters affirms that “in the state forests, there is one or two days maximum of hunting per week” and “in the peri-urban state forests, weekends are often prohibited”. On the other hand, he refuses France Nature Environnement’s proposal to ban hunting on Sunday afternoons.
“It is out of the question that we drop on Sunday afternoon, we are not sub-human.”
Rather, he points to a communication problem. There are many people who suddenly decide at 3 p.m., when there is a ray of sunshine, to go out into the forest. They come face to face with hunters and, because ‘They listen to TV and the radio, they are terrified because they think it’s more dangerous than Ukraine and that there are 300 deaths a day,’ criticizes the president of the National Federation of Hunters.