Hunting Property for Sale in Manche: Bocage Woods, Cotentin Marshes and Wildfowling Ponds

Looking for hunting property for sale in Manche means first choosing between two kinds of sport. In one of the least wooded departments in France, the bocage of the Saint-Lô area, the Coutançais, the Avranchin and the Mortainais forms a tight network of hedges and small woods, where roe deer are plentiful and woodcock spend the winter. In the Cotentin marshes and along the havres (tidal inlets) of the west coast, wildfowl give properties their value, starting with ponds fitted with a gabion, the local sunken hide. Large wooded estates are rare: what comes up is woods of a few hectares, farms with their wooded plots, wet meadows and flighting ponds. This page brings together these shooting grounds and hunting properties for sale in Manche, listed by private sellers, estate agents and notaires.

The data block that follows gives the prices of forests and ponds sold in the department and the big game culls recorded by the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB); then come the marsh, bocage and coastal grounds, and the legal points to check, from gabions to fencing.

The price of a hunting estate in Manche

A hunting estate is rarely valued with a single figure: its price adds up the value of the woodland, the ponds, the buildings and the shooting facilities. The statistics below give benchmarks for wooded land and ponds, based on sales actually recorded.

According to the ma-propriete.fr forest price observatory, built from sales recorded in the French DVF land registry database, the median price of a hectare of forest in Manche was €6,267/ha in 2025†, with an average of €7,230/ha, across 29 sales. With only 29 sales, the sample is too small for these average and median prices to be truly representative of the local market: the regional price is a sounder benchmark. In Normandy, the median reached €10,000/ha in 2025 across 298 sales, with an average of €10,562/ha; the national median was €4,936/ha. Over 2020-2025, the department recorded 143 sales at a median of €6,268/ha.

Nationally, the price per hectare rises with size: the large properties that appeal to hunters sell for more per hectare than medium-sized woods.

Ponds trade at a very different level: with too few sales in Manche, the benchmark is the regional median of €34,014/ha for ponds sold without buildings between 2020 and 2025.

On the listings side, 18 hunting properties are offered on ma-propriete.fr across France as of 2 October 2026, none in Normandy at that date. Their median asking price is €888,000 for a median size of about 68 ha. These are advertised prices for whole properties, sometimes with a house or a pond, not recorded sale prices per hectare like those in the DVF database.

† 10 to 29 sales: sample too small to be representative of the local market. Source: DVF (French tax authority), processed by ma-propriete.fr; forests of 1 ha or more, cadastral type woodland; ponds without buildings of at least 2,000 m²; July 2020 to December 2025; Moselle, Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin are not covered by DVF. Listings recorded on ma-propriete.fr on 2 October 2026.

Game in Manche: official game bag figures

The game bag records published by the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB) measure hunting pressure and, indirectly, the presence of big game. In Manche, 2,781 wild boar and 7,904 roe deer were taken in the 2024-2025 season, along with 22 red deer.

Source: OFB, wild ungulates network, departmental big game bags (total culls, data published on data.gouv.fr).

Hunting property for sale in Manche: marshes, bocage and havres

The Cotentin and Bessin marshes: gabion country

At the heart of the peninsula, the Marais du Cotentin et du Bessin regional nature park covers flood meadows that lie under water in winter and draw duck, snipe and waders. Manche is one of the departments where night wildfowling from a fixed hide is still permitted; here the hide is the gabion, built beside a pond whose water level and banks the owner keeps up. A marsh shooting ground is therefore sold plot by plot: a few hectares of wet meadow, a pond, a declared gabion, sometimes an adjoining pasture.

A gabion is only worth what its legal status allows: only hides that existed on 1 January 2000 and were declared may be used at night, and the declaration receipt must be transferred to the buyer. Check also how the water is managed, with ditches and sluices kept up jointly, whether the land lies in a Natura 2000 site, and the state of the pond, which coypu and silting can quickly degrade. For properties where water dominates, see our ponds and lakes for sale in Manche.

Central and southern bocage: roe deer, wild boar and woodcock

Between Saint-Lô, Villedieu-les-Poêles, Avranches and Mortain, the bocage alternates grazing, hedges on earth banks and small woods of oak and sweet chestnut. Roe deer are everywhere; wild boar keep mostly to the more wooded areas, and red deer are marginal. The main forests lie on the edges of the department: the state forest of Cerisy, shared with Calvados and dominated by beech, and the forests of La Lande-Pourrie and Mortain, on the sandstone heights of the Mortainais. A hunting wood of a few dozen hectares is shot in drives here, with the neighbours’ agreement when beats spill over into their hedges. Woodcock, which winter in numbers in the Normandy bocage, also draw pointer and setter enthusiasts ready to buy a well-placed damp wood.

Havres and the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel: what you cannot buy

On the west coast, the havres of Portbail, Saint-Germain-sur-Ay and Regnéville, and in the south the salt meadows of the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel, are prime wildfowling grounds. Much of this area belongs to the maritime public domain, owned by the State: hunting there follows its own organisation, and the right to shoot it does not come with a house or a pasture by the shore. Only private land behind the shoreline, meadows and back-dune marshes, can carry a transferable shoot, and the Loi Littoral (coastal protection act) severely limits new building there.

Before buying in Manche

ACCA (municipal hunting associations) are not compulsory in Manche: the hunting right goes with the land, and on fragmented bocage plots it is often let to a local hunting club. A small isolated wood is hard to shoot on its own, so ask about existing arrangements with neighbouring grounds before settling on your price. For a wooded plot under 4 ha, the neighbours’ right of first refusal applies. Review the roe deer cull plan and any farm damage claims over several seasons. Finally, fences put up in natural areas since 1993 must comply before 1 January 2027, with 30 cm clearance at ground level and a maximum height of 1.20 m; our article on the fencing rules covers the details and exceptions.

On ma-propriete.fr, hunting properties in Manche, from woods and pastures to marsh plots, are listed by private sellers, estate agents and notaires; filter them by size or price and switch on an alert, as supply is thin. If a wood is your main goal, see our woods and forests for sale in Manche; to widen the search across Normandy, compare with hunting properties in Calvados and all hunting estates for sale in Normandy. Ferry links from Cherbourg make the peninsula easy to reach from Britain and Ireland.