"What do you mean, Hunting Forbidden?"

With four cats in residence this prohibition is frankly futile. Here's Nest in the act of conditioning her claws for another foray. Her camouflage coat must mean she has little trouble stalking and capturing the small animals that become her prey and I couldn't stop her if I wanted to.

I picked up this sign on a walk in the Touraine a few years ago. They're a common sight in the French countryside but they don't indicate that the animals are protected from slaughter, rather that hunting is reserved for those who have purchased, merited or inherited the privilege.

Throughout history killing game has been the pastime of the wealthy, who have no shortage of nourishment, while the poor and hungry have been criminalized, trapped, shot, imprisoned, transported and even judicially murdered for taking a rabbit or a pheasant to feed their families. In Britain the Game Act of 1671 gave gamekeepers the power to enter houses to search for guns, nets and sporting dogs, which those below the rank of esquire were not only forbidden to use but even to own. Punishments were handed out by the very landowners whose interests the law protected.

In 1723 the Black Act introduced the death penalty for over 50 offences connected with poaching, even being found in a wood with a blackened face. Transportation for 7 or 14 years or for life was the more lenient sentence. The 'Poaching Wars' waged between peasant and land-owner over many centuries in Britain and elsewhere are a hidden history that reveal the vicious class conflict that has smouldered behind more better known historical events. Just one example of many similar can be found in this account of a 19th century poaching case in Norfolk. Lincolnshire was also a notorious hotbed of helping yourself and these are the words of a song that commemorates another trial. I can't find it sung but here's a typical rendition of the very well-known Lincolnshire Poacher.

Chasse Interdite - says who?