According to local media, hunters from Var discovered fourteen hunting towers destroyed earlier this month. They are used to the odd tower being smashed, but they were left perplexed by the amount of destruction unknown perpetrators left behind this time. Anchoring posts dug up, structures knocked down, fittings dismantled: all that remains of the hunting cabins is a pile of wood scattered across the woods.
“Every year, we have tree stands destroyed. Here, or further down, at Le Fraye. But this is the first time we’ve had fourteen in one go” says one of the hunters. “I went to the gendarmerie but, like the other years, it won’t do any good. I’m fed up.”
“Often, we’re insulted, even though walkers or motorcycles and quads aren’t allowed to pass here. We’re not murderers,” says another hunter, who remembers one year when the watchtower was vandalized without the hunter stationed above noticing. “The construction cracked when it was almost two meters high. We had to hoist the colleague out by helicopter – it could have been very serious.”
So far, no one has claimed the action.