Hunting is part of rural France in a way that surprises people arriving from almost anywhere else. There are well over a million licence holders. In a small commune a good number of your neighbours will hold one, the season is a fixture of the calendar, and on a winter Sunday morning you will hear it.
For some new owners that is one of the attractions. For others it is a worry, because they have a field and no idea who is entitled to walk across it with a shotgun. Both groups need the same information.
Here is how it actually works: the licence, the gun, and where you stand as a landowner.
The permis de chasser is a real exam
France does not hand out hunting licences. There is a one-day practical and theoretical examination run by the Office Français de la Biodiversité, and it is taken seriously.
You start with your Fédération Départementale des Chasseurs, the hunters' federation for your department. They run the training, and the training is the part that matters — most people who fail have skipped it. Registration for the exam itself is done online through the OFB's own portal, which produces the form and takes the fee.
The exam is scored out of 31. Ten points come from a multiple-choice theory paper and twenty-one from four practical workshops: an obstacle course with blank cartridges, handling a weapon including stowing it in a vehicle, clay shooting with a shotgun, and rifle shooting at a moving boar target.
You need 25 out of 31 to pass. More importantly, one of the theory questions is on safety and getting it wrong fails you on the spot, whatever else you scored. The same applies to any serious safety error in the practical. That is the right way round, and it tells you what the French state thinks the licence is for.
The federations offer a free official mock exam. Use it.
What it costs
The exam registration is €46 for an adult, €31 for a minor. Training through the federation generally runs €30 to €60 depending on the department.
Passing is not the end of it. The licence then has to be validated every season, and the season runs from 1 July to 30 June. For a first-year hunter a national validation comes to somewhere around €65 to €70, which bundles the state fee at half rate, the stamp duty and your federation membership. Departmental validations are cheaper if you only shoot locally.
On top of that, third-party hunting insurance is compulsory — about €20 to €25 a year, and you cannot validate without it.
So the first year is a couple of hundred euros all in, and perhaps a hundred a year after that. By the standards of field sports in most countries, that is not much.
One thing to be clear about before you commit: the exam is in French. The theory paper, the instructions on the day, the safety commands. If your French is shaky, do the federation training first and do all of it — it is the only sensible route in.
Buying a gun: the SIA comes first
This is the part that has changed, and where people arrive with out-of-date information.
Before you buy anything, you need an account on the SIA — the Système d'Information sur les Armes, the national firearms register at sia.interieur.gouv.fr. You create it by logging in through FranceConnect using an existing French government identity, such as your tax or health account. Once your profile is complete you are issued a personal SIA number.
No SIA number, no purchase. The armourer asks for it at the counter and declares the sale into the system in real time.
Most hunting weapons — bolt-action rifles, smoothbore shotguns, certain semi-automatics with reduced magazine capacity — are category C, which means acquisition by declaration rather than by permission. To buy one you need to be an adult, hold a hunting permit endorsed for the current season, and have nothing disqualifying on your criminal record. A medical certificate less than a year old underpins the validity of what you present.
Category B is a different world: handguns and the rest, prohibited in principle and only available by individual prefectoral authorisation tied to one specific weapon. That is the sport shooting route, not the hunting one.
Buy from a properly licensed armourer. Keep the invoice and the sales slip, which carry the category, model and serial number, and you will want them for the rest of the time you own the gun.
Keeping it at home
For category C the law gives you alternatives rather than insisting on a safe: a locked cabinet, or removing an essential component and storing it separately, or fitting a device that prevents the weapon being used. Ammunition is kept apart from the gun.
For categories A and B a proper gun safe is required, with ammunition stored separately.
If you have children in the house, do the full version regardless of what the minimum allows.
Where hunters stand on your land
This is the question that actually keeps new owners awake, and the answer is more nuanced than either side will tell you in the bar.
In many departments hunting is organised through an ACCA, a communal hunting association. Where one exists, the hunting rights over smaller parcels of land in the commune are pooled into it — which can include yours, without anyone asking you.
You are not without options. An owner can object, either by holding a large enough continuous block of land, or on grounds of personal conviction against hunting. Objections are made through the prefecture, they run in multi-year cycles rather than being made on a whim, and an owner who objects takes on obligations of their own, including signing the boundaries and dealing with wildlife damage on the land.
The rules vary by department and the detail matters, so the honest advice is this: ask at the mairie before you buy, not after. They will tell you in two minutes whether the commune has an ACCA, which days are hunted locally, and who runs it.
And one piece of practical advice worth more than the legal position. If you are going to live there, introduce yourself to the local hunting society early, whatever you think of the sport. They know every path, every boundary and every neighbour in the commune, and a relationship with them is worth a great deal more than a sign on a gate.
If you are only visiting
If you are not resident and want to shoot while you are over, speak to the departmental federation before you travel. There are temporary validations and arrangements for licences issued in other countries, but the conditions vary and bringing a firearm across a border has its own paperwork entirely. That is a conversation to have with the federation and well in advance, not something to sort out on arrival.
Where it fits with the house
If being able to shoot matters to you, it is worth factoring into where you buy rather than treating it as a detail to settle afterwards. Inland communes with real countryside around them are a different proposition from a coastal village, both for the hunting itself and for how close your nearest neighbour's garden is.
It also cuts the other way. If you would rather not have hunting over your land, the size and position of the plot matters, and so does the commune. That is the sort of thing worth knowing before you choose, and it costs nothing to ask.
We build across Brittany, Normandy and the Vendée and we know these communes. If it matters to you one way or the other, tell us when we talk and we will take it into account when we suggest plots. Book a free half-hour, or reach us on WhatsApp or by email for a same-day answer. You can also see what each of our plots comes to, all in, with the build cost calculator.