«Tasting the Wild. Hunting and Game Consumption in the Central Pyrenean Area from the early eighteenth century to the beginning of the Second World War. », in A. Prinz (ed.), Hunting Food & Drinking Wine. Proceedings of the Conference in Poysdorf, Munster, Lit Verlag, 2006, pp. 65-72.

• Main Author: Duhart, Frédéric
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Zenodo 2006
• Subjects: Anthropology of food; History of food consumption; Foodways; History of Tourism; Bear Meat; Mountain Animals; Pyrenees; Spa; Lagopus mutus; Ursus arctos
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2544133; https://zenodo.org/record/2544133

The spa society plays an important part in the central Pyrenean economy from the early eighteenth century. Hunting and game consumption become here a complex phenomenon, by the union of the demand for local or refined foods and of the medicinal advices. With the taste for local products in the spa society, some Pyrenean animals become game and the consumption of different species (bear...) evolves in another way than the local customs. The spa society develops also new forms of hunting with effects on the environmental and social context. Gradually, hunting and game consumption take part in the building of the Pyrenean representation. The species especially studied in this paper are: Rupicapra rupicapra (izard), Ursus arctos (bear), Tetrao urogallus (capercaillie), Lagopus mutus (ptarmigan), Bonasa bonasia (hazel grouse), Turdus torquatus (ring ouzel) and Columba palumbus (wood pigeon). The discovery of the pyrenean landscape and the birth of fashionable spas which occur during the early modern time, lead to the existence of two very different communities in the central Pyrenees: a seasonal and original population, composed by tourists and foreigners come to take the waters, appears beside the old mountain societies. This new situation has very important effects on the local economy, in the full etymological meaning of this word: new productive and commercial activities spring up while some relations with non human elements of the local ecosystem are radically modified. The developments and the evolutions of hunting and game consumption provide a perfect example of these changes: practices and desires of Pyrenean visitors turn species into games; they also create markets for wild meats and give them important functions in a gastronomic and symbolical discourse. Spas are not isolated towns in a mountainous countryside; on the contrary they are centres of which internal dynamics have effects on whole neighbouring ecosystem. A new Pyrenean hunting arises from their development; it is many-faceted. Some people explore the mountain a stick in a hand and a gun in the other: with them, nearly all the animals become games which can be shot and eaten. They are not representative of all the foreign hunters, because of their excesses; however their practices accentuate mainlines of the new Pyrenean hunt: new games, new motivations and new methods by comparison with the few ways of hunting of the dwellers. The discovery of Pyrenean landscape is accompanied by an attraction for picturesque characters, situations or things. So, some mountain products which had not importance in the local diet become fashionable because when he tastes them, the visitor literally eats pieces of Pyrenees. This passion for wild meat generates a flourishing market and an intense predatory activity of which consequences are heavy at long-term. Roasted fillets of bear served on restaurant tables remind us of the gap between certain spa uses and local customs. However, game is not the only wild food used by the cooks of the spas; fishes, mushrooms and berries also pay tribute to the stomachs of the tourists: there are various ways of eating the Pyrenees!