A man of the three French republics and the Vichy regime, François Vidron was both a forester and a hunter, a pheasant breeder and a deer protector. Trained as a water and forestry engineer (IGREF), he was more than just a man at the crossroads, whose life story tells us about an entire chapter in the history of the environment in France, and even more about a certain national and republican management of nature “à la française”. Born on February 8, 1899 in Fontainebleau and dying in 1985 in the Paris region, he began his training in eastern France in the midst of the First World War, before moving to the Île-de-France region, where he enjoyed an extensive professional career that can be explained by his passage through, and even his “encounter” with, Rambouillet. This article examines the complex and little-known career of this forester in the highest echelons of the French forestry and hunting administration. François Vidron (1916-1970) : la figure complexe et méconnue d'un expert forestier-cynégéticien et protecteur de la nature En Fr