Bulk of 5 wooden jacks (poplar), natural color.

From the CLASSIC range, these jacks = “cochonnets” in French – for a fun literal translation into English it would be “piglets” (also called in translation from another known French name: “the little one= le petit”).
The FIPJP – Federation Internationale de Petanque, in thier rules names this small wooden boule which serves as the target of the petanque game: “le but” = “the goal or the target”.

Thrown by one of the winners of the previous round, often the pointer (or initially by a player from the team drawn at random to start): it thus serves as a benchmark towards which the players must bring their boules as close as possible – sometimes even to the point of touching it, we call this “faire un biberon = make a baby-bottle” when the ball is kissing the jack, and thus score valuable points, at the end of each round (when the boules of a team closest to the “pig” in comparison to those of their opponents can score one point each).

Sometimes, depending on the situations and game strategies, a shooter in a team also has the role of removing opponents’ boules from the jack by shocking them hard, and sometimes by replacing them directly with his own, it is the “king’s shot” named “au carreau ” = knocking the target boule away and exactly taking its place.
He can also target the jack, and if it leaves the field: then, it is said to be “dead” and the round is then finished.

This jack, so coveted at petanque, in its ancestral version is normally made of wood (preferably boxwood for purists), but we are seeing plastic jacks appear, and sometimes even luminous)…

Let’s bet that this “piglet” is not about to be eaten :-):-):-)