Wild boar, deer and stags in our garden
We have a lot of fruit and nut trees in our garden at Le Mas & Le Mazet, and we’re surrounded by field and woods. So there is a good chance that you’ll see deer grazing when you stay here – and if you’re very lucky you’ll see wild boar, deer and stags in our garden.
Some of our guests said that they heard load snorting and chomping one night, coming from the area of the garden with fruit trees. We have a motion-detector nighttime camera for guests to use for this very reason, so they set it up and we were amazed by what they filmed over two nights!
On the first night a singular of boars (the collective noun for a group of boars is a ‘singular’ as they are normally solitary and so it’s singular to see them in a group) and boarlets appeared – we think there are 18 of them in total! They loved eating the mirabelles on the ground.
On the second night, a stag with huge antlers appeared to graze in our garden. We think that it has 14 points, or tines (like on a fork) on it’s antlers, which designates it’s an Imperial stag. When it reaches 16 points, then it’s a Monarch, like in the TV programme some of you might remember, ‘Monarch of the Glen’.
From October to March hunting of deer and wild boar is permitted in France. This is because there are no natural predators for boar and deer and they do a lot of damage to the land, especially farmland and truffles. Our lawn hasn’t been dug up too much by boars, but the farmers’ fields around us have been. So if you see men in orange jackets with guns walking about, don’t worry but make yourself known. I often sing loudly when walking our dog in the woods, if I think there are hunters about!