Hunting Wild Pigeons in France's Basque Country

For centuries, the men of the Basque Country have hunted wild pigeon. On the palombe’s annual migration south — from northeastern Europe through western France and into Spain — there is one spot where hunting the bird has been done the same way for hundreds of years. In the Basque Country straddling the border between France and Spain, the tall peaks and narrow byways of the Pyrenees bottleneck the palombes, making the flocks denser and easier to track. Through the centuries, the annual hunt has become intimately intertwined with local life, in ways that tracking wild boar or deer, which requires isolation and a more masterful skill level, cannot hope to replicate.

Unlike in the rest of France, where villages are emptying out due to urban migration, here, whitewashed split-timber hamlets dot the velvety mountainsides, and close, intergenerational family networks are doing better than most. Every fall, local men of all ages are stricken with what Hervé Etchemendy, who comes from the village of Lecumberry, calls “the blue fever,” taking off work to disperse throughout the peaks of the Pyrenees to hunt. “When October arrives,” he says, “work isn’t too productive. We’re constantly looking to the sky. We’ve all had the fever since we were little.”

From “Hunting Pigeon in the Pyrenees” by Alexandra Marshall for the New York Times Style Magazine, 2016; Photo by Celine Clanet

#hunt #hunting #hunter #bird #birding #celineclanet #travel #tourism #pigeon #basque #basquecountry #france #french #spain #spanish #portrait #paris #palombe #wild #nature #country #fall #story #stories #thestorybar