DJV hunting ethics leave the core question open

In July 2026, at the Federal Hunters' Day in Suhl, the German Hunting Association adopted a new position on hunting ethics that seeks to embed every killing in a code of conduct, but skips over the decisive question.

On 8 August 2026, the association Wildtierschutz Deutschland criticised the paper in a statement grounded in scientific, legal and conservation expertise, and formulated five requirements for a justifiable killing, on which the justification of hobby hunting fails.

Anyone speaking about animal ethics cannot avoid a prior question: not how an animal is killed with the least possible suffering, but whether the killing as such can be justified. It is precisely on this point that the new position of the German Hunting Association (DJV) fails to provide an answer.

The key points in brief

• The DJV paper «Hunting ethics in discourse» regulates how hunting is done, not whether a specific killing is justified, and presupposes the legitimacy of hobby hunting.
• According to the Federal Administrative Court, the «reasonable cause» under § 17 of the German Animal Welfare Act is an interest worthy of protection that, in an individual case, must outweigh the protection of the animal; social acceptance does not replace this examination.
• Wildtierschutz Deutschland formulates five touchstones for a justifiable killing: a defined objective, suitability, necessity, proportionality and monitoring.
• The raccoon shows that hobby hunting is not a suitable form of management: the hunting bag has increased thirteenfold since 2003, yet the population continues to grow.
• Since 1974, the canton of Geneva has demonstrated that wildlife management works without private leisure hunting.

Code of conduct instead of justification

The position paper «Hunting Ethics in Discourse» bears the document status of 4 July 2026 and addresses fair-chase principles, self-restraint and the use of modern night-vision aiming technology. The DJV frames private recreational hunting, hereafter hobby hunting, as something linked to respect and responsibility, and seeks to make huntresses and hunters «articulate». The paper expressly concedes that the motives of tradition and experiencing nature are, taken on their own, insufficient. At the same time, it declares that advocacy for hunting as an expression of human freedom is a non-negotiable core value, and ties the «reasonable ground» to acceptance by a majority of society.

It is precisely this reversal that lies at the heart of the problem. A code of conduct governs the how, not the whether. The statement speaks of a shift in the burden of proof: hunting is presumed from the outset to be freedom-based and useful, while it is primarily execution and presentation that are critically scrutinised. In this way, ethics rhetoric protects the hunting status quo instead of putting it up for debate, and the perspective of the affected animal is reduced to a mere question of implementation.

The night-vision technology about-turn

The mutability of the fair-chase concept becomes especially evident in the handling of night-vision aiming technology. For years, the use of fixed-mounted night-vision aiming devices was regarded even within hobby hunting itself as not being in keeping with fair-chase principles, and under federal law it was prohibited by the Federal Hunting Act and the Weapons Act. It was only through the increasing night hunting of wild boar and the fight against African swine fever that the stance shifted. In May 2025, Hesse introduced a Federal Council initiative intended to permit fully-fledged night-vision aiming devices under federal law. An actual amendment to weapons law, however, still requires a legislative procedure in the Bundestag.

Now proponents justify the use of the very same technology as a contribution to a more precise and thus animal-welfare-compliant shot. What was considered unsportsmanlike yesterday is today deemed compliant with animal welfare. The DJV paper deliberately keeps its options open here: it calls for self-restraint but leaves the limit to individual decision. This shows how little binding the term «fair chase» is operationalised as soon as a new benefit for hunting comes into play. A yardstick that turns according to the respective need is unsuitable as an ethical guardrail.

What remains hidden in this line of reasoning is the animal that can no longer find any rest. The nocturnal activity of roe deer, red deer and wild boar is to a large extent an avoidance reaction to human disturbance and hunting pressure during the day. Where hobby hunters now roam the hunting grounds even at night with thermal imaging and night-vision sighting devices, wildlife loses its last place of refuge and can effectively be hunted around the clock. This can increase stress and impair the use of refuge areas. It is not only the hunted species that are affected: nocturnal disturbance also strikes protected animals such as owls, bats and small mammals. How thermal imaging cameras, night-vision sighting devices and drones undermine the notion of fair hunting is shown in our dossier on night hunting and high-tech hunting.

The «reasonable ground» is not a mere formality

Legally, the bar is set higher than the DJV position suggests. The German Animal Welfare Act requires a «reasonable ground» for killing a vertebrate (§ 17 TierSchG), and animal welfare has been enshrined as a state objective in the Basic Law since 2002 (Art. 20a GG). The Federal Administrative Court requires an interest worthy of protection that, in the specific case, outweighs the protection of the animal. Social acceptance may influence this weighing of interests, but it replaces neither the factual proof nor the justification. Switzerland, too, requires a weighing of interests: the Federal Constitution protects the dignity of living beings (Art. 120 para. 2 of the Federal Constitution), and the Animal Welfare Act prohibits burdens on animals that cannot be justified by overriding interests. The German concept of the «reasonable ground» cannot, however, be transferred one to one to Swiss law.

Ethical hunting practice concerns above all the how of exercising the hunt, whereas the reasonable ground answers the preceding question of whether a specific killing should take place at all. The paper leaves this distinction open. Nor does the subsequent use of the meat make a killing carried out for the pleasure of hunting or as a pastime reasonable after the fact.

Five criteria on which the paper fails

Wildtierschutz Deutschland formulates five requirements for an ethically justifiable killing: a sufficiently defined and legitimate objective, suitability based on robust evidence, necessity with priority given to milder means, proportionality in the narrower sense, as well as transparent monitoring with abort and correction rules. The blanket justification of hobby hunting fails against these benchmarks, because for numerous hunting measures the benefit has so far not been demonstrated transparently and on a project-specific basis.

The statement backs this up with studies. A study by Jiguet and colleagues found, for 12.4 million foxes, mustelids and corvids killed in France, no correlation between the intensity of killing and the reported damage, whereby the costs of hunting exceeded the damage. The synopsis by Langgemach and Bellebaum on the predation of ground-nesting birds does not justify blanket fox hunting at all: the primary cause of endangerment is large-scale habitat change. These studies show that blanket justifications based on predation control or damage prevention are no substitute for concrete proof of effectiveness.

The raccoon demonstrates this exemplarily. The hunting bag in Germany rose from 21’149 animals in the hunting year 2003/04 to 284’220 in the hunting year 2024/25, a thirteenfold increase. The population could not be curbed in this way; on the contrary: a scientific review notes that, despite drastic measures, the interventions had no lasting reducing effect and the population growth was probably not even slowed. The biological mechanism is known: shooting leading females causes reproduction to rise compensatorily. Anyone who wants to reduce the population effectively cannot avoid biological control methods. It is precisely here that it becomes clear that hobby hunting is not a suitable form of management. It is not carried out by specialists such as wildlife biologists according to population-ecological criteria, but by hobby hunters, whose activity demonstrably does not steer the development of the population. Evidence on further species is gathered by our Overview of scientific studies on the impact of hobby hunting on wild animals.

When ethics merely administers the killing

Behind this lies a pattern that reaches beyond hunting. When an institution develops standards for how a killing should proceed so that it counts as «good» rather than «unsatisfactory», it improves the conditions under which killing takes place, but does not question the killing itself. In the case of humans, such an institution would not be part of the protection, but part of the crime. The term «protection» lends an administrative practice a moral legitimacy that it does not deserve, thereby making it harder to challenge, precisely because it presents itself as progress.

That is exactly what the DJV hunting ethics achieve for wild animals. They regulate fair chase, the protection of parent animals and self-restraint, that is, the conditions of killing, and leave untouched the basic assumption that one may kill a sentient being without an overriding reason. In this way the rhetoric of ethics stabilises the existing system instead of examining its foundation.

Geneva shows that it can be done differently

The canton of Geneva has demonstrated for over fifty years that killing by hobby hunters is not a necessity of nature. Since 1974, private hunting has been banned there by popular vote. Necessary interventions are carried out by state environmental wardens; these include observation, damage prevention and targeted regulation following the individual identification of the animal. The model does not show that no animals are killed any more, but it does show that wildlife management can be organised without private recreational hunting.

Ultimately, the criticism is aimed at the legislator: obligations to provide justification and evidence, the priority of non-lethal measures and independent monitoring could be anchored in hunting law. As long as the preliminary question of legitimacy remains unanswered, the DJV's new hunting ethics replace justification with a code of conduct. Where proof of an overriding benefit cannot be provided, the killing must be forgone, not merely carried out in a more fair-chase manner or communicated better as hunting.

More on the legal situation in the article: Hobby hunting without a reasonable ground is unlawful

Sources

• German Hunting Association (2026): Hunting Ethics in Discourse. Position paper, document version 4 July 2026, adopted at the Federal Hunters' Day in Suhl.
• Wildtierschutz Deutschland e.V. (2026): Hunting Ethics in Discourse. Critical statement on the position of the German Hunting Association, as of 8 August 2026.
• Federal Administrative Court, judgment of 13 June 2019, 3 C 28.16 (on the “reasonable ground” under Section 17 of the German Animal Welfare Act).
• Animal Welfare Act (Germany), Sections 1 and 17; Basic Law, Art. 20a; Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation, Art. 120 para. 2; Animal Welfare Act (Switzerland).
• Jiguet, F. et al. (2026): Ecological and economic assessments of native vertebrate pest control in France. Biological Conservation 316, 111719.
• Langgemach, T. & Bellebaum, J. (2005): Predation and the protection of ground-nesting bird species in Germany. Vogelwelt 126, 259 to 298.
• Michler, F.-U. et al.: The North American raccoon in Germany. Background, areas of conflict and management measures.
• German Hunting Association: Hunting statistics on raccoons, hunting years 2003/04 to 2024/25.