Gaston’s Le livre de la chasse formalized the hunter’s assemblée as the model for a meal during a hunt. It is not a picnic. Gaston did not intend this gathering as a luncheon but as an early morning meeting during which the day’s hunt was discussed and planned. Methodically, Gaston describes “How the Assembly (Assemblée) should be in Summer and Winter.” But an illustration of a 1407 edition of the book shows the hunters dining on the grass in a forest clearing. Creating the impression that this is a picnic, which it is not. Confusion rests on the fact that hunters and staff at Gaston’s assemblée, or meeting of hunters, gather in the early morning to examine the chief tracker’s presentation of fumes, or deer turds, to the master of the hunt.
Both Jacques du Fouilloux’s La Venerie (1560) and George Gascoigne’s The Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting [aka The Booke of Hunting] (1575) treat the tryst as a midday meal.
Gaston III, comte de Foix. “The Gathering in Winter and Summer,” In The Book of the Hunt, [ Le livre de la chasse]. Paris:1407c.; http://www.themorgan.org/collection/livre-de-la-chasse/24