Canton of Vaud launches safety course for recreational hunters

The canton of Vaud has launched a new, voluntary safety training for recreational hunters and is funding it with 2,500 francs per year.

A mandatory requirement is being examined. Around 130 recreational hunters took part in the first session in the north of Vaud, which, according to RTS, was a first in French-speaking Switzerland.

The initiative was triggered by a fatal incident in November 2024. RTS reported on it and provided two figures that require a more precise interpretation.

The “fellow student” who was none

RTS writes that a Vaud recreational hunter accidentally killed “one of his fellow students” (“condisciple”) in 2024. That sounds like an accident among training participants. In fact, the incident occurred on 24 November 2024 during a wild boar hunt in Oulens-sous-Échallens: a recreational hunter, then around 80 years old and a former president of the Diana Vaud, fired prohibited deterrent shots from a rise to drive wild boars out of the thicket. A bullet fatally struck the head of a 64-year-old fellow hunter from the canton of Fribourg, who was positioned below the rise.

In May 2026, the shooter was given a suspended sentence of ten months for negligent homicide, a fine of 2,000 francs, had to pay around 75,000 francs to the victim's family and received a hunting ban shortened to three years, among other things so that he could continue to accompany his grandson on the hobby hunt. For the claim that a recreational hunter shot an instructor in Switzerland, no evidence can be found in the available sources. This case, too, concerns an experienced fellow hunter, not a training situation.

The circulated accident figures: what they really show

RTS cites ChasseSuisse with 300 reported hunting accidents per year and 23 fatalities over ten years. Both figures are fragments from different surveys and are placed side by side by RTS without any context.

The 300 accidents come from the UVG accident insurance statistics and record exclusively employees with mandatory accident insurance. Pensioners, the self-employed and other groups are entirely absent, precisely that segment of the population which is disproportionately represented among recreational hunters. On paper this amounts to one hunting accident every 29 hours, but that is an annual average from a partial statistic, not a complete record.

A third, considerably higher figure is circulating in parallel: according to the BFU statistics, between 2000 and 2019 alone more than 75 people died in the context of recreational hunting. This figure is not directly comparable with the 23 fatalities from the ChasseSuisse analysis, since the source, time period and method of recording differ from one another. More on this in our dossier on hunting victims in Europe.

The central contradiction

The president of the Vaud Diana sections, Alexandre Berthoud, explains the causes of accidents in the RTS report as «non-compliance with safety», comparable to a driving error in road traffic. That is precisely what the court confirmed in the Oulens-sous-Échallens case: according to the indictment, the convicted shooter knew that deterrent shots were prohibited and acted regardless. A voluntary supplementary training course with 130 participants does not answer why a long-standing association official with decades of experience could disregard elementary safety rules, and it is likewise no proof of greater safety.

Following the death, the Vaud Young Greens called for mandatory further training, periodic health and fitness checks, the definitive withdrawal of the hunting licence in cases of serious violations, and a zero-tolerance policy towards alcohol during hunting. At the time, neither a compulsory further training requirement nor mandatory health checks were provided for in the canton. These demands and the handling of the fatal incident are missing from the current RTS report.