We met these two guys while they were having lunch. I thought at first they were soldiers from the nearby commando training HQ, but in fact they were hunters. They called Jasper across and wanted to know all about him, so I gave them the essentials: English springer spaniel, not a hunter himself but all his brothers and sisters were sold to hunters, father was a French field trials champion, from a breeder in the Lozère etc. Then I asked a few questions myself, and found out that they were Jean-Marc and Jean-François, that they had been hunting mouflon, a wild sheep with enormous horns, for which the season had opened on the 1st Sept., that they had shot one, butchered it in place and put it in their sac, and were now on their way home.
They were OK when I asked if I could take their photo, but Jean-François thought I had asked because of his unusual headgear, so he gave me this story: It looks like a beret but in fact it is a tarte (tarte being French for pie). It has much in common with a beret, being made from the same closely-woven wool so that it is wind and rain resistant, but the tarte has a much larger diameter. The beret comes from the western Pyrenees, the Basque country, where it was originally worn by shepherds. The tarte is an adaptation from the Alps on the other side of the country, originally also for shepherds, and the larger size protects the face from snow and ice. Later French mountain regiments adopted it and it in fact became their symbol. The military tarte is even larger, wide enough that when the wearer is on sentry duty it stops snow falling on his feet !
If it wasn't for his tarte, Jean-François would have a bit of a Robert De Niro Deerhunter vibe going, don't you think ?
