Hunting and Animal Welfare: What the Practice Does to Wild Animals

Hunting is readily portrayed as a contribution to animal welfare. Recreational hunters speak of "wildlife management", of responsibility and of a "quick death". But animal welfare does not mean that an animal dies as efficiently as possible. Animal welfare means avoiding suffering, reducing stress and respecting life. This is precisely where the central conflict between hunting's self-image and hunting's reality lies.

The Swiss Animal Welfare Act requires the protection of animals' dignity and wellbeing. The Civil Code states that animals are not objects. Both statements also apply to wild animals. And both statements stand in fundamental contradiction to a system that kills wild animals for leisure activity, tradition and supposed "regulation" – even though alternatives exist, are documented to work, and are simply not prioritised politically.

What awaits you here

• The "instantly fatal shot": ideal and reality: What missed shots, grazing shots and follow-up searches reveal about the system – and what they mean for the animals affected.
• Stress as a form of suffering: what hunting pressure triggers in the wild animal's body: What wildlife research shows about stress hormones, energy expenditure and flight responses under hunting pressure.
• Driven hunts: when stress becomes a method: What drive hunts and driven hunts mean for wild animals, both ecologically and in terms of animal welfare law.
• Parent animals and offspring: when a single shot destroys a social structure: Why "population regulation" is an abstraction that conceals what actually happens.
• Night hunting and technologisation: when efficiency lowers the threshold of restraint: What thermal cameras, night vision optics and silencers mean for the principle of animal welfare.
• Animal welfare law versus hunting practice: the structural contradiction: What Swiss law says – and how far hunting practice is removed from it.
• Alternatives: what works instead of killing: What non-lethal methods of wildlife population regulation exist, are scientifically proven, and are politically ignored.
• Argumentation guide: Answers to the most common justifications for hunting practice, from an animal welfare perspective.
• Quick links: All relevant articles, studies and dossiers.

The “instantly fatal shot”: ideal and reality

In hunting's self-presentation, the clean, instantly fatal shot is the standard. In reality, it is an ideal that is regularly missed. Wild animals move, rarely stand perfectly in the open, lighting conditions are difficult, shooting distances are underestimated, and excitement and group pressure reduce the quality of decision-making.

The figures from Grisons are the clearest documentation available: between 2012 and 2016, 3,836 of 56,403 killed animals were initially only wounded. Wildlife biologist Lukas Walser confirmed to SRF: “This proportion is roughly the same every year.” This means that in a single canton, several hundred wild animals are shot and wounded every year, suffer, and are only killed in a manner compliant with animal welfare standards after a delay – if at all. Follow-up searches with hunting dogs are presented as the solution. In truth, they are an admission of the systemic problem: if follow-up searches are necessary, the system by definition has a core that is prone to causing injury. Extrapolated across all hunting cantons over several years, this results in tens of thousands of cases in which wild animals suffer – documented, structurally caused, and systematically normalised.

More on this: High hunt in Switzerland: traditional ritual, zone of violence and stress test and High hunt in Grisons: control and consequences for recreational hunters

Stress as a form of suffering: what hunting pressure triggers in the wild animal's body

Animal welfare is not limited to the moment of death. It begins where suffering begins – and for wild animals, suffering begins long before the shot. For a wild animal, hunting first means disturbance, then flight, then disorientation.

What wildlife research consistently shows: hunting stress triggers a cascade of stress hormones in the body that mobilises energy reserves, sharply increases heart rate and breathing rate, and puts the musculature into a state of emergency. This state costs energy that is not readily available, particularly in autumn and winter – precisely the periods when the high hunt and winter hunt take place. Studies from Scotland and Scandinavia show significantly higher cortisol levels in hunted red deer populations compared with unhunted populations. For females with young, accelerated stress is particularly consequential: milk production collapses, parent–offspring bonds are disrupted, and young animals lose the protective presence of the mother during critical phases. This is animal suffering – even if it does not materialise in a shot.

More on this: The psychology of hunting and Hunting and biodiversity: does recreational hunting really protect nature?

Driven hunts: when stress becomes a method

Drive hunts and driven hunts are the hunting method with the highest structural stress level for wild animals. The principle relies on wild animals being driven out of cover – through noise, barking dogs, human presence and coordinated movement. The goal is maximum flushing-out in order to enable shots.

What this means for the animals affected is well documented by behavioural biology: wild animals display panic flight behaviour during driven hunts, which is extremely costly in energetic terms and frequently leads to injuries. Young animals that have not yet developed stable flight behaviour are separated from their family groups. Animals flee into unfamiliar terrain, cross into other territories and lose their bearings. Swiss animal welfare legislation explicitly defines suffering as an assessment criterion – the wellbeing of animals expressly includes fear and stress. This does not make driven hunts a grey area, but a politically normalised contradiction of the country's own legal position.

More on this: Ban on driven hunts (template motion) and Ending leisure-time violence against animals

Parents and young: when a single shot destroys a social structure

Public communication speaks of «population regulation». That sounds technical and neutral. What actually happens when a parent animal is killed is neither technical nor neutral.

In red deer, wild boar and wolves, social structures are complex and based on learning. Young animals learn from adults how territory is used, which food sources are exploited and how conflicts with humans can be avoided. If a lead female – a hind, a sow, an alpha female wolf – is killed during the period in which she is leading her young, offspring can become orphaned, starve or end up in conflict-prone situations because they lack this social learning capital. In the Valais wolf policy of 2025/2026, seven young wolves were killed as part of «baseline regulation» – that is, animals that had never had the chance to learn how their pack deals with livestock farming and cultivated landscapes. The irony is that these very learning processes are crucial to reducing wolf conflicts in the long term. Those who kill young animals are investing in more conflict – not less.

More on this: Protection of young animals and parent animals (template motion) and Wolf in Switzerland

Night hunting and technologisation: when efficiency lowers the threshold of restraint

Night vision optics, thermal cameras, silencers and drones for locating wild animals all increase hunting efficiency. They also shift the ethical field in a direction that is barely discussed in the public hunting debate: they lower the inhibition threshold.

When hunting becomes technically easier, care does not automatically increase. Often, the pressure of expectation rises instead: kill quotas are meant to be fulfilled, hunting ground holders expect results, and social recognition within hunting circles depends on success. In this context, technologisation does not lead to fewer shots, but to more shots fired under more difficult conditions. Night hunting means that wild animals are disturbed during their main period of activity – the only time window that still offers them relative protection in settled landscapes. The revised JSV has, in principle, banned night hunting in forests, but at the same time introduced cantonal exemptions for "damage prevention". As Grisons, Bern and Valais show, these exemptions are being used consistently. The ban has thus effectively become a regulated framework of permission.

More on this: Night hunting and high-tech hunting and Recreational hunting starts at the desk

Animal welfare law versus hunting practice: the structural contradiction

The Swiss Animal Welfare Act (TSchG) explicitly protects the dignity and wellbeing of animals. Under Article 3 TSchG, wellbeing explicitly includes: freedom from pain, freedom from fear, and the ability to display species-appropriate behaviour. This applies to all animals – including wild animals that are not kept in captivity. Since the 2003 revision, the Civil Code has stated in Article 641a ZGB that animals are not things.

Both legal provisions are, in practice, effectively suspended in hunting policy. Stress, fear, flight, pain from failed shots, and the resulting suffering caused by the destruction of packs are documented and systematically occurring consequences of recreational hunting. They constitute avoidable suffering – and would not be tolerable under animal welfare law in any other context. The hunting act creates an exception that is hardly justifiable on factual grounds: a system that regularly produces animal suffering is privileged under animal welfare law simply because it has become socially normalised. This is a political condition – not a natural one. It can be changed.

More on this: Hunting and Human Rights and Hunting myths: 12 claims you should scrutinise critically

Alternatives: what works instead of killing

The recreational hunting lobby claims that wildlife management would collapse without recreational hunting. The canton of Geneva has disproved this since 1974: professional wildlife management by state game wardens, no recreational hunting, the highest hare density in Switzerland, the country's last grey partridge population, and strongly increased biodiversity. What works as an alternative:

• Habitat improvement: Extensive meadows, hedgerow structures, fallow land and small-scale habitat features naturally promote population balance – without a single shot being fired.
• Natural predators: Wolves, lynx and foxes regulate wildlife populations more efficiently, more cost-effectively and in a manner more compatible with animal welfare than recreational hunters. Their eradication over decades is in fact the real cause of many so-called “overpopulation problems”.
• Non-lethal deterrence: Acoustic and visual systems, fences, scent barriers and adapted land use have been demonstrated to effectively reduce conflicts with wild animals in agriculture.
• Targeted professional interventions: State game wardens with a clearly defined mandate, independent monitoring and scientific support can intervene where genuinely documented, significant and repeated damage occurs – without the blanket, area-wide approach of recreational hunting.

These alternatives are not left unused because they fail to work. They are not used because the lobby that profits most from maintaining the status quo is, at the same time, the one with the greatest influence over hunting policy, hunting authorities and hunting-political narratives.

More on this: Geneva and the hunting ban and Arguments against recreational hunting and for game wardens

What needs to change

• Make poor-shot rates transparent and sanction them: All cantons must systematically record and publish follow-up search data, poor-shot rates and resulting suffering. Repeated poor shots must lead to withdrawal of the hunting licence. Template motion: Template texts for hunting-critical motions
• Ban driven hunts: Drive hunts and driven hunts cause the highest structural stress levels of all hunting methods and are incompatible with the Animal Welfare Act. Template motion: Ban on driven hunts and drive hunts
• Consistently extend closed seasons to cover parent animals and young animals: Parent animals caring for young and dependent young animals must not be hunted at any time of year. Social structures are not collateral damage – they are the foundation of functioning wild animal populations. Template motion: Protection of young animals and parent animals
• Restrict night hunting and technological escalation: Night vision optics, thermal cameras and silencers lower the inhibition threshold and disturb wild animals during their last resting phase. Cantonal exemptions from the JSG night hunting ban must be handled restrictively and limited in time.
• Professional wildlife management instead of recreational hunting: Where intervention is necessary, state game wardens take over, supported by scientific monitoring, independent oversight and a clearly defined mandate. Template motion: Hunting ban modelled on Geneva

Talking points

«Hunting is animal welfare – without regulation, populations would explode and starve.» The canton of Geneva has had no recreational hunting for 50 years and has recorded no population explosions, no starvation epidemics and no ecological collapses. Luxembourg has had no fox hunting since 2015 and stable fox populations. Natural regulatory mechanisms – food availability, predators, disease – work. They were displaced by decades of recreational hunting, not replaced by it.

«Experienced recreational hunters shoot cleanly and in line with animal welfare standards.» In Grisons, several hundred animals are merely wounded by gunfire every year – documented over five years by the Office for Hunting and Fishing itself. This is not the failure of individual recreational hunters. It is a structural feature of an activity that involves shooting at moving targets under unpredictable conditions. Structural problems are not solved by more training alone – but through systemic change.

«Death by hunting is faster and more humane than death by predators.» This statement ignores the stress and suffering before death and sets a standard that systematically glosses over killing by hunting. Animal welfare is not «less bad than the worst». Animal welfare means avoiding suffering wherever possible. And there are documented alternatives that cause no suffering to wild animals.

«Care and management by recreational hunters benefit wild animals.» Anyone who cares for a population only to then kill it is not practising animal welfare. That is resource management, not an animal welfare achievement. Genuine animal welfare achievements lie in habitat improvement, natural predator promotion and conflict-reducing agriculture – all measures that require no recreational hunting.

Quick links

Articles on Wild beim Wild:

• High hunt in Grisons: control and consequences for recreational hunters
• Valais Wolf Report 2025/2026: Figures of a Massacre
• Fox hunting without facts: how JagdSchweiz invents problems that others have long since solved
• Arguments against recreational hunters
• Ban on driven hunts (template motion)
• Protection of young and parent animals: consistent closed seasons and quiet zones (template motion)
• Hunting ban modelled on Geneva: Replacing recreational hunting with professional wildlife management (template motion)

Related dossiers:

• Hunting and Wildlife Diseases
• Night Hunting and High-Tech Hunting: How Thermal Imaging Cameras, Night Vision Devices, Drones and Digital Lure Calls Expose the Myth of Fair Chase
• Hunting Dogs: Use, Suffering and Animal Welfare
• Lead Ammunition and Environmental Toxins from Recreational Hunting: How a Toxic Legacy Burdens Birds of Prey, Soils and Humans
• High Hunt in Switzerland: Traditional Ritual, Zone of Violence and Stress Test for Wild Animals
• African Swine Fever: How an Animal Disease Becomes a Justification for Recreational Hunting
• Hunting Accidents in Switzerland
• Hunting and Animal Welfare: What the Practice Does to Wild Animals
• Hunting and Weapons
• Driven Hunt in Switzerland
• Wait Hunting: Waiting, Technology and Risks
• Earth hunting
• Trap hunting
• Wait hunting
• Special Hunt in Grisons

Our Standard

Animal welfare is not a marketing tool for recreational hunting. It is a legal entitlement that applies to all animals, including wild animals, including in the forest, including in autumn. The Swiss Animal Welfare Act protects the dignity and wellbeing of animals. The Civil Code states that animals are not things. Both principles are de facto suspended in hunting policy practice, because a socially normalised leisure activity is given privileged treatment under animal welfare law.

This dossier documents the structural contradiction between animal welfare law and recreational hunting using data, studies and legal foundations. The information is continuously updated whenever new findings, rulings or political developments require it.

Do you know of specific cases, documented hunting consequences or media reports that show what recreational hunting does to wild animals? Write to us with date, location and source: wildbeimwild.com/kontakt

More on the topic of recreational hunting: in our hunting dossier we bring together fact checks, analyses and background reports.