Live birds, kept in cages to more easily attract and hunt wild birds: this is the hunting technique of the “callers”. According to some activists, this practice should be banned. For hunters, it’s a safe tradition. Explanations.
A live goose, coot or duck used to attract wild birds and be able to hunt them. It’s called “callers”. “These domestic ducks, they are placed in completely aberrant situations in relation to their minimal welfare.“, deplores Pierre Rigaux, naturalist, activist and co-founder of Nos Viventia.
During hunts, callers are tethered to bodies of water or locked in nearby cages. It is then their song that attracts migratory birds. “As we hunt at night, these birds usually call their congeners and then, of course, make them land in the lake where we are hunting.“explains Nicolas Lottin, president of the Baie de Somme Hunters Association.
This practice is denounced by several activists, including Pierre Rigaux. “There are thousands of huts and several hunters per hut and therefore thousands, tens of thousands of birds used as callers, therefore with miserable living conditions“, he punishes.
The regulations require appellants to be born and raised in captivity. Private farms are limited to 100 birds and must be declared ringed. To keep them from flying, part of the callers’ feathers is regularly cut off. “We must succeed in banning the use of appellants. If we forbid this use, this hunting mode there in the huts is all the better because it is a hunting mode that has no ecological interest. It is a calamity for wild birds that are slaughtered, it is a calamity for domestic birds that are mistreated“concludes Pierre Rigaux.