Violence by hobby hunters against animal welfare advocates

The Swiss hunting fair at the Umwelt Arena Spreitenbach was controversial from the start. IG Wild beim Wild had protested against the event with a petition and 850 protest emails to the municipality of Spreitenbach and the Umwelt Arena.

At the fair, activists demonstrated peacefully in front of the entrance. A hobby hunter grabbed Olivier Bieli by the neck and stole his mobile phone. The unknown man then allegedly threatened Bieli again: «He asked me if I wanted a punch in the face», writes 20min.ch.

«Execute Bieli with a silencer»

The threats were not limited to public spaces. In relevant hunting forums and recreational hunter groups on the internet, Olivier Bieli was explicitly threatened with death in the weeks before the Spreitenbach incident. Hunt Watch documents on its official channel:

From multiple reliable sources within and outside the Basel-Landschaft hunting scene, various statements containing clear violent fantasies against Hunt Watch founder Olivier Bieli were reported to us in recent weeks, including calls for his murder using a silencer. In the past, the hunting scene has already bluntly threatened to beat Bieli to the point of hospitalization.

This is not an expression of opinion. It is a death threat under Article 180 of the Criminal Code, punishable by imprisonment of up to three years or a fine, even when expressed online and in group formats.

That the same activist was physically attacked at a public demonstration just weeks after these threats is no coincidence.

Hunt Watch itself explicitly distances itself from any counter-violence and calls on the hunting scene to "refrain from acts of violence against animal rights activists in any conceivable form and to immediately cease the violent excesses against animals." The response from organized recreational hunters: silence.

Activist thrown to the ground

On December 17, 2025 a HUNT Watch activist legally observed a drive hunt in Füllinsdorf and Arisdorf (BL) from a public forest path. A beater verbally abused her, threatened her, and violently threw her to the ground. He was carrying a stick-like object with a metal rake and presumably a stabbing weapon on his belt.

The perpetrator was allegedly an out-of-canton hunting supervisor who has no official authority outside his canton and is legally considered a private person. He had no right to order the activist away or touch her. The activist filed criminal charges and subsequently had to obtain a judicial contact and restraining order against the man because the intimidation continued privately.

Not all attacks are directly physical. Animal welfare activists who observed and documented Basel-Landschaft recreational hunters during recreational hunting returned to their vehicle and discovered: The tires had been slashed. Property damage as a means of intimidation—anonymous, cowardly, but unambiguous in its message.

This incident adds another dimension to the pattern: when physical confrontation appears too risky, the property and safety of observers become targets. The goal remains the same: deterrence, silence, withdrawal.

Chokehold and unconsciousness

An animal welfare activist wanted to observe how a killed deer was butchered in a slaughterhouse in Trimmis GR. A recreational hunter present spat on her, snatched her mobile phone, and pressed her to the ground in a chokehold with the words: "You old, frustrated cow!" The animal welfare activist lost consciousness and was taken to the emergency room with documented injuries to her upper arm, elbow, shoulder, and neck. She filed criminal charges with the Graubünden prosecutor's office. The prosecutor's office imposed a gag order on the animal welfare activist.

Whoever torments animals is soulless, and God's good spirit is lacking in them. No matter how noble they may appear, one should never trust them. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German poet)

Shot fired behind a fleeing person

A hiker documented in Tersnaus two recreational hunters who first verbally attacked him, then swung at him with rifle butts, and finally fired a shot behind the fleeing man with the cry: "We'll get you yet!" Police in Ilanz allegedly never found the perpetrators. The investigating officer was transferred. The file disappeared.

«The more charges filed, the sooner he will disappear from the scene»

What appears as violent fantasies in chats and forums has a documented institutional counterpart in the environment of the JagdSchweiz association.An internal email from September 11, 2016, written by Dominik Feusi (then Basler Zeitung) to Hanspeter Egli (former president of the militant JagdSchweiz association), shows how critics should be dealt with. The exact wording:

The goal is to completely silence S……. […] The more charges filed, the sooner he will disappear from the scene.»

National Councilor and FDP lawyer Thierry Burkhart was recommended as coordinator. Not to enforce justice, but to silence a critic through a coordinated flood of criminal charges, through coordinated abuse of the justice system. This is no coincidence. This is method.

The plan failed in court. On July 17, 2020, the Criminal Court of Canton Ticino completely acquitted wildbeimwild.com. Judge Siro Quadri found that the criticized statements about JagdSchweiz were not lies and had no defamatory character. JagdSchweiz also lost the civil proceedings in Locarno. The judgment is final.

Violence against animals, violence against humans

The documented attacks on animal rights activists and campaigners are no coincidence and no derailment by individual «black sheep». They follow a psychological logic that research has known for decades.

The connection between violence against animals and violence against humans is one of the most replicated findings in aggression research. A study by Northeastern University and the SPCA found: People who torture animals are five times more likely to be violent toward humans as well. Violence against animals does not act as a valve that reduces aggression, but as a training ground that lowers inhibition thresholds.

For recreational hunters, a specific mechanism is added: Austrian psychologist Iris Grohs found in one of the few systematic German-language studies that hobby hunters assess themselves as significantly more aggressive than non-hunters, resolve conflicts more often through dominance and control, and have a different relationship to violence. At the same time, psychological models suggest that repeated, pleasure- or tension-based killing of animals influences aggression processing, sensation-seeking, and distancing mechanisms.

Brain research complements this picture: Repeated acts of violence can dampen emotional responses to suffering and erode empathy, toward animals as well as toward humans. A hunting culture that frames killing as success, strength, and belonging and dismisses compassion for animals as weakness thereby creates a social context in which violence against critics and observers is not a psychological exception, but an obvious continuation.

This does not explain everything. But it explains why violence repeatedly comes from the same scene and why this is a structural problem, not isolated cases.

No authority, but weapons

Hobby hunters are private individuals. They have no police powers in public spaces. They may neither turn away walkers, nor control hikers, nor touch activists, not even during an ongoing recreational hunt.

At the same time, they carry loaded firearms. This combination—no control, full armament, pronounced group culture, and political protection—creates a danger potential that is massively underestimated in public debate.

No other sector with comparable risk potential—whether road traffic, security services, or the chemical industry—accepts self-regulation. Recreational hunting does. This is not an oversight, but the result of decades of political influence.

What observers and activists need to know

Observing and documenting recreational hunts from public roads is legal. Photographing or filming hobby hunters in public spaces is also legal. Recreational hunters have no authority to order observers away, control them, or touch them. In case of attacks: create distance, continue documenting, call police and file criminal charges. Online threats should be immediately secured via screenshot with URL, timestamp and profile name before content is deleted. Criminal charges are also possible for online threats.

Further information: Crime and hunting · Psychology and hunting · Hunting lobby dossier

More on this in the dossier: Psychology of hunting