The Beast of Gevaudan - The importance of shooting reenactement

Was the Beast of Gevaudan wearing an armor ? This question has been made popular by investigators who think that the animal could have been a mixed race between wolf and dog, bred by one or several criminals, which would explain its so-called immunity to firearms witnessed by several people through the historical records.

To explain this repeated failures at a very short distance (a dozen steps), where the Beast was hit and fell, but always stood up to finally escape, some authors developed the theory that it might have been protected by an armor, maybe from a wild boar skin, which would also explain the dark line seen on its back by several witnesses.

This theory has been accepted by several authors, including Michel Louis in 1992, to finally gain a dominant place in popular culture and become one of the very characteristics of the case in everyone's mind. Without suprise, this theory was found in the Brotherhood of the wolf movie script by Pierre Pelot in 2001.

Such a fondamental theory about this case, whith deep meaning regarding a human intervention, must be proof tested. Much to our surprise, it wasn't done by Michel Louis, nor was it by Jean-Marc Moriceau, his main opponent on the case, to either validate or invalidate it.

As a hunter and a black powder shooter for many years, we have dedicated a full chapter of our own investigation on the Beast of Gevaudan to this topic.

We used a replica of a french Fusil de Tulle for this purpose. This royal manufacture in Corrèze was established circa 1690 on the already existing network of local arquebuse manufacturers, and its initial production was intended to go to the overseas troops. Facing difficult conditions at the beginning of the 18^th century, it maintained a production of hunting guns. This model was used because it is a good example of gunsmithing of the era of the Beast, and its simple and rough finish is accurate for a modest hunter or rural landlord of the time, ase were the brothers de La Chaumette or M. de la Védrines, or the gamekeeper Jean Chastel.

Loading

We shot pure lead bullets, cast by ourselves as was the habit two and half centuries ago. They weight 325 grains and their caliber is .60. They were shot « patched » (pushed down the barrel centered on a lubed cotton disk which overlap them and fill up the space in the .64 smoothbore tube). Powder load was 65 grains, which is inferior to the maximum load authorized by the proofing. Its is in any case an inferior load of what was used by the time of the Beast, were the archives tell us that double or triple load against the predator were common.

The target device

We built a 4 feet target with drawer which allowed us to test the bullet penetration through different combined materials :

• a 2 inches clay block, to witness the shockwave born by the muscles of the Beast,
• a layer of artificial leather simulating the Beast skin,
• a layer of short hair artificial fur simulating the Beast fur,
• a layer of genuine thick leather (1/8 inches) simulating a leather armor,
• a layer of long hair artificial fur simulating the boar skin hiding the leather armor.

After this first shooting test, our friend Clément who was hosting us this day gave us a genuine wild boar skin. We repeated our shootings on the boar skin alone, and then on the boar skin backed by a layer of genuine leather (1/8 inches), thus simulating an old boar thick skin.

The author in shooting position at twelve feet

 

The target deviced was furbished with a genuine wild boar skin

We finally shot at a modern S235 steel plate (1/16 inches) set up in our target device, so as to see how the pure lead bullet was behaving against it.

The results of this shooting session were clear and let nothing to the imagination regarding 18^th century firearms abilities and the theory of the armored Beast of Gevaudan. We hope to share those results with our readers very soon.

The Beast of Gevaudan - A foreword

The case of the Beast of Gevaudan has become a bad crime fiction story. It is as annoying for the crime fiction writer that we are as it is to the readers interested for more than a century in this tragical and puzzling historical event. Above all, it is sad for the memory of the almost hundred official victims, not counting those that may have been forgotten by historical archives of the time. There have been so many contradictory statements published about the Beast since half a century that new generations are inclined to believe it is just a myth, an old legend born form credulity and superstition of ancient times.

It is not so. The french province of Gévaudan, now split in two administrative department named Lozère and Haute-Loire spreading across the Margeride mountains, actually saw a long serie of attacks whose records go back to 1764, and which ended in 1767 with the killing by a local hunter of an animal still unknown to this day, despite the discovery in the Department Archives in 1958 of an autopsy report by a royal notary established the day after the killing.

Let's agree on the « bad » adjective used previously. It is not about qualifying the case itself, according to subjective criterias such as entertainment. The cruel death of dozens of human beings, most of them children and teenagers, savagely hurt or maimed, subjects to terror and suffering in their last minutes, is not entertaining, even considered two and half centuries after the case. The distance, bet it chronological or cultural, that separates us from this era, doesn't grant us the right to become dishonorable.

If we do label this event a « bad crime fiction story », it as a writer and commentator of this literary genre facing sloppy investigations, often including biased incriminating evidence. Through the important bibliography dedicated to the case, led nowadays by works from Michel Louis and Jean-Marc Moriceau setting up a status quo situation filled with mutual hostility, the fundamentals of a serious investigation have not always been followed. The conclusions presented at the end of many books are rarely based upon a full analysis of the huge historical records available, and often deviate from logical and scientifical thinking to go into speculations oriented by assumptions. Some authors wrote about this case while they have no knowledge of the historical context, of the rural world, never went hunting, are ignorant about 18^th century firearms and may never have been to the Margeride mountains.

It is no accident that the autopsy report of the Beast killed in june 1767 was finally discovered in the farming section of the Lozère department records in 1958. It is the rural world, the humble french peasantry of ancient monarchy, who was the first victim of the monster rampage. The case of the Beast of Gévaudan is a case of hunters, hunting parties, preys and predators. A trouble and dreadful period of time where human beings were considered as game, causing fear and outrage among the population, and asking for royal authorities to deploy more and more important means to put an end to killings that were attracting a lot of media attention.

Despite the numerous works on the subject, the main question still has no answer : was it a lone animal ? Was the Beast wild or domesticated ? Was it an exotic kind ? A crossover bred by one or several criminal minds ?

To submit these theories to a rigorous analysis is what will be at stake throughout our investigation. It is out of the question to offer the readers a new proposal which will just entertain them but won't give them a deeper knowledge of the case because we would have dumped all the facts that don't go our way.

We will first consult the historical data, quite important, and replace it in its historical and geographical context. We will then analyze the archives funds in terms of scientifical and technical aspects. For example, we will perfom shooting tests using a replica of an 18^th century flint gun to verify if the Beast could have been protected by some kind of man-made armor. It is not the crime fiction writer anymore who will offer his readers the most complete investigation on the Beast of Gévaudan, but the rural world inhabitant, the big game hunter and black powder shooter, the technical and scientific graduate, the six sigma certified aerospace industry qualitician.

Our only permanent requirements will be the proven fact put in its context, the comparative and critical study and the logical thinking based on available data. We will use it for all know theories and if the truth ask to highlight the weakness of already published works, we will dot it.

Time has covered the sufferings endured by the Beast's victims under a dull and dusty veil of indifference. What remains is morbid curiosity and trouble fascination for the intellectual enigma offered by the case. We still have a duty : not to forgot the pain and anguish felt by sons and daughters of the Margeride mountains, the dreadful and fatal fate that awaited them at a grove, an hollow track or a pasture, and whose martyrdom is still haunting that beautiful landscape where granite whisper to the skies.

This being said, are you now ready, my friendly readers, to follow our track in the old kingdom of France, through the mountains and harsh winters of an old province of Languedoc, in the year of our lord seventeen sixty-four ?

Tracking the Beast of Gevaudan...

Ending ten years of research, we closed on a sunny sunday our publishing project related to the case of the Beast of Gevaudan, who devoured almost a hundred of people, mainly kids and women, from 1764 to 1767 in the old Gevaudan province in southern France. Hosted for the occasion by our friend Clément, we performed some shooting reenactement, using our replica of a french Fusil de Tulle (.20 Ga caliber smoothbore), which was also a famous fur trade  weapon in New France.

Learnings from this shooting session are essentials and allow us to answer key questions about the reported ability of the Beast to withstand firearms shots. We can now close our last chapter of this project, which is to our knowledge the most extensive historical, technical and scientifical investigation about the Devourer, which also led us three times from 2005 to 2015 in old Gévaudan, now mainly known as Margeride mountains.

Our researches opened a brand new investigation field, and show why the two main in force theories - one of a domesticated canine hybrid led by two local criminals, and the other one about a gang of grey wolves whose rampage would have been enlarged and ampliffied by local superstition - are incomplete and wrong.

The project being currently read by several publishers, we hope to be able to present in a near future our conclusions about what still remains today as the most famous hunts in the old kingdom of France.