Hunting ground mapping: how to draw and share your zones

Hunting ground mapping means recording the property boundaries, stands and safety zones on an accurate plan. The process clarifies responsibilities, reduces accident risk and gives the society chairman a record of what he passed on to his hunters in case of an inspection or dispute.

Saturday morning, the wild boar bursts out of the edge. It runs between two oaks. The hunter on stand 5 raises his shotgun. The neighbour appears in the same line of sight, behind the hedge. Or worse: the game falls on a parcel that does not belong to the ACCA (municipal hunting association). The chairman pulls out his map. It is folded in eight, stained with coffee, and the boundary is drawn in felt pen, faded years ago. The gendarme wants to know what document you gave to your hunters.

This kind of morning decides between a quiet season and a winter of legal proceedings. Mapping your territory serves safety, management and the chairman’s liability. Paper or digital, a clear map changes everything. A missing or incorrect map exposes every participant, starting with the chairman. This article covers French regulations.

Why should you map your hunting ground?

Hunting ground mapping first serves safety, then harvest plan management and relations with neighbours.

Driven hunt safety comes first. According to the Fédération nationale des chasseurs (FNC, the national hunters’ federation), half of hunting accidents occur during big-game driven hunts, and many could be avoided by following the 30-degree rule¹. This rule assumes every hunter on a stand knows where their neighbours are and where the drive is passing. Knowing the exact position of each stand, the permitted angles of fire and the safety zones prevents crossing lines of fire. This ties in with the basic rules of driven hunt safety.

Field experience confirms it. In Occitanie, federation technicians have audited over 100 hunting grounds since the 2023-2024 season as part of the ASAPT programme². Their finding is clear: “The absence of visual support is a recurring comment during audits.” They recommend large-format maps (A0), the GPS position of each stand and a hunting perimeter visible to all participants².

Complying with the harvest plan also requires an accurate map. When you allocate wild boar or roe deer quotas by sector, each beater must know where their zone begins and ends. Without a map, quotas become guesswork. You harvest too much here, not enough there. The harvest tally loses its meaning if nobody knows which sector was hunted.

Preventing disputes with neighbours falls into the same logic. The boundaries with neighbouring properties, roads and public paths: all lines worth knowing before the day itself. A vague boundary over fifty metres is enough to cause an argument during the pick-up.

The chairman must also give participants the means to understand the terrain. A map sent before the driven hunt shows what you communicated. A sketch scribbled on the morning of the hunt, on the bonnet of a van, leaves no trace.

What are the legal rules for setting the boundaries of a hunting zone?

In France, the framework differs depending on whether you run an ACCA or a private ground.

For an ACCA, the territory is a list of parcels. The association must keep the list of its members and the parcels making up its territory up to date, and these documents remain available for consultation at the registered office, recalls the Meurthe-et-Moselle departmental hunting federation³. Your map must therefore match this list, parcel by parcel.

Some communal land is not pooled. The FDC 54 cites land within 150 metres of dwellings, land under hunting or philosophical opposition, and State-owned land (public domain, SNCF, national forests)³. On your map, these areas appear as gaps in the territory. Forgetting them means placing a stand where the ACCA has no hunting rights.

The reserve must also be mapped. Each ACCA places at least 10% of its territory in a reserve, marked with signs at every access point, and this reserve cannot be taken from land within 150 metres of dwellings³. Its location changes in principle at five-year anniversaries, on application submitted six months in advance³. An up-to-date map prevents hunting in a former reserve or forgetting the new one.

On private land, no display requirement applies to boundaries. A sign at each corner of the property remains good practice: it limits trespass and misunderstanding.

Be aware of a common mistake. The cadastre and the IGN map do not serve the same purpose. The cadastre gives ownership. The 1:25,000 IGN map gives relief and paths. For your hunting boundaries, you use the cadastre. To place your stands and drives, you use the aerial photograph.

How to make a hunting ground map without being a geomatics specialist

A hunting ground map can be built in four steps using free public tools, without expensive software.

1. Get the cadastre. The cadastral plan is freely available on cadastre.data.gouv.fr, a service of the direction interministerielle du numerique (DINUM)⁴. The raw data is in EDIGEO format, an expert format that opens in QGIS, JOSM or GDAL⁵. For an easier option, the “Cadastre Etalab” version provides parcels in GeoJSON, by commune⁶. The latest edition is dated 1 September 2026⁵.
2. Check against the aerial photograph. The Geoportail has given way to the cartes.gouv.fr viewer, which the IGN presents as its successor⁷. Display the aerial photograph and the parcels, then compare with the terrain. A discrepancy often comes from an old boundary marker or a hedge that has moved. Trust the ground, not the screen alone, and walk the boundaries. A phone’s position remains approximate: it is enough for a driven hunt, not for official surveying.
3. Draw your hunting ground. Add the driven hunt stands, safety zones, prohibited firing directions and water points. Use distinct colours: red for boundaries, yellow for safety zones, green for stands. Name each stand. A hunter who reads “Stand 7, no firing towards the road” understands the instruction immediately.
4. Export and print. The GPX file loads onto a phone or hiking GPS. The PDF prints for beaters who prefer paper. Keep an up-to-date digital version and a paper backup on the day.

Did you save links to your old Geoportail maps? cartes.gouv.fr has offered a converter since January 2026 that makes them compatible with the new service⁸. On cartes.gouv.fr, the “Annotate the map” tool lets you draw points, lines, areas and text, but you need an account to save the sketch⁹.

If a boundary dispute exists with a neighbour, call a surveyor. For everything else, digital mapping is enough to organise a driven hunt or stalking.

How to share your hunting ground map without creating risk

Sharing creates liability for the chairman. A map sent by WhatsApp or email becomes a written document. It shows what you communicated to your hunters. If it is wrong, imprecise or incomplete, it can be used against you.

Divide your information into two levels. The common version contains the territory boundaries, driven hunt stands, safety zones and car parks. The confidential version keeps the stalking spots, regular game crossing points or camera trap locations. Do not mix the two. A guest hunter invited for a day does not need to know your permanent stalking positions.

Control who sees what. The chairman and line leaders have full access. Beaters see the drive routes and prohibited zones. Guest hunters receive their stand and immediate boundaries. This segmentation limits the spread of sensitive data.

Be wary of the public link. On cartes.gouv.fr, a map can be shared via a web address, an embed code for a website or a social media post, and the viewer sees the map as it was at the time of sharing¹⁰. A forwarded link circulates without control. For a hunting ground, prefer sharing limited to members.

What tools can you use to map your hunting zones?

The following table compares four approaches for your hunting zones.

Sources: cartes.gouv.fr^{9 10}, qgis.org¹¹, Mes Chasses help centre^{12 13 16}.

A paper map is still useful on the day for the beaters. It is no longer enough beforehand. QGIS is free¹¹ and very powerful, but you need to master file formats and projections. cartes.gouv.fr is handy for a quick sketch, without stand or member management. Digital mapping tools for hunting combine cadastral base, stand drawing and selective sharing.

With our cadastre-based mapping, you draw the perimeter by tapping the parcels, place the stands and set an indicative firing sector for each^{12 13}. A map can be shared at three levels: hunting ground members, logged-in users or public¹³. On mobile, the organiser downloads the hunt zone to keep the base map without a network¹⁴. The sectors remain indicative: the decision to fire is always the shooter’s¹².

For a first map without an account, the free hunting map traces the territory on the cadastre and places the stands. A free account then lets you print from A5 to A1 or export as GPX and KML¹⁵.

Conclusion

Hunting ground mapping is within reach of any society, even a small one. It protects your hunters, preserves relations with neighbours and clarifies your liability. The audits carried out in Occitanie are a reminder: the lack of visual support comes up time and again². The map folded in eight has had its day. The digital cadastre and instant sharing have taken over.

You can start right now. Download the cadastre for your commune, check your boundaries on cartes.gouv.fr, then draw your stands and reserve. Then share the map with your team, each according to their role. To go faster, open the free hunting map from Mes Chasses and draw your territory this evening.

References