Special Hunt in Grisons

Every year in November and December, the Canton of Grisons declares a special hunt. Officially, it is a measure for forest regeneration and population regulation. What becomes visible upon closer examination is a correction mode that has become institutionalized routine: The main hunt in September fails to meet the culling targets, the special hunt compensates for this, and this cycle has repeated itself since the introduction of the cantonal hunting law in 1989. What was conceived as an exceptional instrument has become a structural signal that questions the hunting planning itself.

Grisons is a patent hunting canton. Every year, several thousand patents are issued, giving their holders access to recreational hunting throughout the entire cantonal territory – without permanently assigned habitat, without institutionally anchored area responsibility, without long-term accountability for wildlife or biotopes. The special hunt is the visible symptom of a system that cannot adhere to its own planning logic – and whose mechanism has therefore been politically controversial in hunting policy for years.

This dossier systematically questions the special hunt in Grisons. The focus is not on moral judgments, but on verifiable facts: numbers, culling targets, enforcement reality, biological impact and political resistance. Additionally, our cantonal analyses provide an in-depth classification:Psychology of hunting in Canton Grisons, Bern, Valais and Geneva etc.

What to expect here

Main hunt and special hunt: The system of corrections. Why Grisons has depended on the special hunt for decades, what the main hunt in September is supposed to achieve and regularly fails to deliver, and what this structurally reveals about the Grisons patent hunting system.
What is permitted during the special hunt – and what that means. Which kills are permitted during special hunts that would be prohibited during the regular hunting season, why pregnant red deer hinds, roe deer does and their young may be legally killed, and what this means in terms of animal welfare law and hunting ethics.
Kill quotas 2025: What the shooting plan really shows. Concrete figures from the Graubünden shooting plan 2025, comparison with previous years, development of the red deer population and what the figures reveal about the claimed regulatory success.
The 2019 popular initiative and its successor. How an initiative with over 10,000 signatures sought to abolish the special hunt, why the Grand Council rejected it by a vote of 96:1, which information was withheld from parliament and why the political resistance of Wildtierschutz Schweiz continues.
The Swiss National Park: Wildlife without hunting in the canton itself. What the hunting-free National Park has shown for over a hundred years, why stable ungulate populations without recreational hunting are not exceptional, and what former National Park director Heinrich Haller has to say about it.
Wolf, livestock protection and institutional failure. What the Calanda pack empirically shows about wolf regulation, why wolf culls in Graubünden are not scientifically substantiated, and what the Val Fex case reveals about the enforcement by the cantonal hunting administration.
What would need to change. Concrete demands: abolition of the special hunt, restructuring of the regular hunting season, game warden structures, consistent livestock protection, transparent full cost accounting and federal legal framework.
Arguments: Responses to the most common justifications for the Graubünden special hunt.
Quicklinks: All relevant articles, studies and dossiers at a glance.

Regular and special hunting: The system of corrections

The regular hunting season in Graubünden lasts 21 days in September. It is the canton's central hunting event – and at the same time the most consequential in its structural weakness: Approximately 1,000 fines and charges are issued annually against hobby hunters, more than in any other Swiss canton. Nevertheless, the regular hunting season is officially the instrument with which the canton is supposed to fulfill its kill quotas.

For decades, it has failed to do so. In the reference year for the 2019 initiative, the shooting plan envisioned killing 5,430 red deer in September. In reality, 3,404 animals were shot – around 2,000 fewer than planned. This shortfall had to be made up during the special hunt in November and December. The pattern has repeated annually since then: In the 2025 regular hunting season, 3,432 red deer and 2,502 roe deer were killed, a result slightly above the 20-year average, and yet the canton is scheduling another special hunt for November and December.

The hunting structure favors male trophy bearers, while females and young animals are often spared during the regular hunting season. This creates a selection error that is corrected during the special hunt through targeted killing of females and young animals. What is termed a 'special' hunt has long become institutionalized routine: a correction that has become the norm and represents a structural signal that calls hunting planning itself into question.

More on this: Psychology of hunting in the canton of Graubünden and Special hunts 2025: More kills – instead of listening to the wolf

What is permitted during the special hunt – and what it means

The special hunt in Graubünden permits practices that would be prohibited during the regular hunting season: the killing of pregnant and leading red deer hinds as well as roe deer does with their young, entire family groups and social units. With the killing of pregnant red deer hinds, fetuses die in the womb. The initiators of the 2019 popular initiative described these scenes as 'morally, ethically and hunting-wise reprehensible' and they are, by their own account, hobby hunters and animal lovers themselves.

This practice also has biological consequences. Wildlife whose social structures are broken up through targeted removal of lead animals and dominant females lose orientation, territorial order and communication systems. Hobby hunters, as deployed in the special hunt, chase animals in panic through retreat areas, leading to increased browsing damage on forest trees, not less. The special hunt thus produces the very browsing pressure it purports to combat according to official justification.

Additionally: The special hunt falls during the winter rest period of wildlife, a phase of reduced food intake, energy-saving mode and beginning pregnancy. Interventions during this particularly vulnerable time window produce particularly high cortisol stress loads according to stress studies. From an animal welfare perspective, the special hunt is thus the opposite of a controlled regulatory intervention.

More on this: Wildlife, mortal fear and lack of anaesthesia and Studies on the impact of hunting on wildlife

Culling figures 2025: What the shooting plan really shows

For the 2025 special hunt, the Graubünden hunting authority plans to shoot 1,711 female red deer and their calves, 281 roe deer and 10 chamois. The shooting figures for deer are below the previous year because the deer population has declined slightly since 2020. For roe deer, however, more are to be shot than in 2024 because too many bucks and too few females were killed during the main hunting season. This paradigmatically shows how the planning logic works: selection errors from the main hunt are corrected in the special hunt through shooting females and young animals.

For wild boar, no upper limits exist whatsoever; they may be hunted year-round in Graubünden, justified by alleged damage to agriculture and forests. This is ecologically paradoxical: wild boar are landscape gardeners of the forest. When intensively hunted there, they retreat to agricultural areas, precisely those zones where damage occurs. Here too, the hunting system creates problems it claims to solve.

The actual significance of the culling figures lies in the trend: Despite years of main hunting with over 3,000 red deer killed per season, the deer population in Graubünden temporarily rose to 16,500 animals. If shooting were real regulation, this increase would not be possible. Instead, it demonstrates compensatory population dynamics in real time: the more intensive the hunting, the higher the reproduction rate and the greater the need for correction in the next special hunt.

More on this: Why recreational hunting fails as population control and Hunting myths: 12 claims you should critically examine

The 2019 popular initiative and its succession

In spring 2019, a committee submitted a popular initiative to abolish the special hunt in Graubünden – with over 10,000 signatures, a record participation for a cantonal hunting initiative. The initiative did not demand the end of hunting, but a factual restructuring: extending the main hunt by four days to 25 days, fulfilling shooting plans by the end of October at the latest, and increased hunting in wildlife protection areas within this timeframe. The basis was provided by the study 'Red deer in Rätikon' (2015), which proves that the vast majority of deer are already back in the canton by October.

The Grand Council rejected the initiative by 96 to 1 votes – while essential information had been withheld from parliament. Government Councillor Mario Cavigelli (CVP) had not disclosed that the Federal Office for the Environment had concluded the initiative did not violate higher law and that alternatives to the status quo certainly existed. IG Wild beim Wild subsequently filed criminal charges against Cavigelli; the initiators had to take the costly legal route to the Federal Court so that the vote could take place at all. The popular initiative narrowly failed at the ballot box on May 19, 2019. Initiator Christian Mathis demanded around 113’000 francs compensation from the canton for the procedural costs incurred; the canton did not pay, and the case was referred to the administrative court.

Political resistance is thus not concluded. Wildtierschutz Schweiz launched a follow-up initiative against special hunting. The democratic debate over special hunting in Graubünden continues and will have to be conducted under better information conditions than in 2019.

More on this: Graubünden: Yes, to abolishing special hunting and Hunting in Switzerland: Fact-check, hunting types, criticism

The Swiss National Park: Wildlife without hunting in the canton itself

Anyone wanting to examine the thesis that wildlife without recreational hunting inevitably "gets out of control" need not look to Geneva. The strongest counter-example lies right in Graubünden itself: the Swiss National Park. There, recreational hunting has been banned for over a hundred years. Ungulate populations fluctuate within natural ranges – controlled by climate, food availability, diseases and predators, not by hunting quotas.

Former National Park Director and wildlife biologist Heinrich Haller puts it succinctly: "The park is a piece of wilderness that is left to itself and where nobody hunts. This is not a problem. Even without hunting, there are not suddenly too many foxes, hares or birds. Experience shows that nature can be left to itself." This is not a romantic conservation idea, but the empirical result of more than a hundred years of observation in Canton Graubünden itself.

The National Park directly contradicts the central narrative of cantonal hunting policy: that intensive hunting is necessary to maintain ecological balance. If a hunting-free area in the same canton maintains these balances without intervention, the interventions outside the park do not follow from scientific necessity, but from institution, tradition and political determination.

More on this: Alternatives to hunting: What really helps, without killing animals

Wolf, livestock protection and institutional failure

The wolf is the most effective natural regulator of ungulate populations in Graubünden and simultaneously the most combated animal of cantonal hunting policy. The Calanda massif provides the strongest locally anchored data point for this: Since the reestablishment of the first wolf pack in Switzerland in 2011, the number of deer in the wolf territory decreased by an estimated third – while the deer population in the entire canton of Graubünden increased by 18 percent in the same period. This is trophic cascade in real time: wolves change the behavior of prey animals, deer avoid risk zones, young trees can grow. A University of Leeds study (2025) quantifies the indirect CO₂ binding effect of a single wolf – through reduction of browsing pressure and enabled forest regeneration – at around 6’080 tons per year, corresponding to a monetary value of around 178’000 francs. The study was developed for the Scottish Highlands; however, the principle of trophic cascade also applies to alpine forest ecosystems such as those in Graubünden.

A study of 3,000 wolf scats also shows that over 96 percent of prey remains came from roe deer, red deer and wild boar. Livestock accounted for less than 1 percent. Despite this, 47 wolves were killed in Graubünden in the 2024/25 season alone. The canton simultaneously justifies these interventions with 'damage prevention', 'increasing shyness' and 'preserving social structures' — a logical contradiction: Anyone who wants to protect social structures must explain why repeated intervention in packs including young animals does not increase the risk of behavioral changes and maladaptations.

In the Val Fex case (August 2025), the institutional credibility problem intensified: In a wolf attack on a sheep alp in the municipality of Sils in the Engadin, 37 sheep were killed or had to be euthanized. Cantonal communication claimed the attack occurred 'despite protective measures taken'. Research shows, however: At the time of the attack, neither livestock guardian dogs nor wolf-deterrent fences were present — the animals were grazing in an area that was explicitly designated without protective measures according to the individual farm protection concept. Department head Adrian Arquint is therefore the focus of criminal charges for alleged misinformation to the public. Scientific reviews meanwhile conclude that non-lethal measures on average perform more convincingly against livestock attacks than lethal interventions — and the evidence base for 'killing helps' is weak and contradictory.

More on this: Psychology of hunting in Canton Graubünden and Special hunts 2025: More culling — instead of listening to the wolf

What would need to change

Abolition of the special hunt as institutionalized routine correction: A hunting plan that has generated the same need for adjustments since the introduction of the Hunting Act in 1989 is not working. The first step is honest analysis: Why does the general hunting season systematically miss its targets? As long as this question is not asked politically, the special hunt remains what it is — a symptom manager without addressing root causes.
Extension and ecological redesign of the general hunting season: The 2019 popular initiative made a factually justified proposal: extending the general hunting season by four days, utilizing October when the majority of deer return according to studies. This approach deserves serious political reevaluation, independent of the voting defeat.
Consistent, mandatory livestock protection before any shooting of protected predators: Wolf culls without proven and documented exhaustion of non-lethal measures are legally questionable and scientifically unjustified. Livestock protection must be financed, monitored and anchored as a condition — not as a retroactive fig leaf.
Independent control of cantonal hunting administration: The institutional proximity between hunting administration, recreational hunters and agricultural interests in Graubünden makes independent control structurally difficult. An externally staffed scientific control body is needed for culling approvals, livestock protection verification and communication to the public.
Pilot projects with hunting-free zones following the National Park model: The Swiss National Park shows what is possible in the Graubünden mountains without recreational hunting. Hunting-free zones with systematic wildlife monitoring would provide reliable comparative data and shift the political debate from narrative to empirics.
Transparent full cost accounting of the special hunt: What does the special hunt cost including administrative expenses, damage compensation, enforcement costs and legal follow-up costs? Anyone defending the special hunt as a 'cost-neutral regulatory instrument' must put an honest total calculation on the table. Model proposals: Template texts for hunting-critical motions and Graubünden: Yes to Abolishing the Special Hunt

Arguments

«The special hunt is necessary because the main hunting season does not adequately regulate populations.» This is the strongest argument for the special hunt and simultaneously the strongest argument against the entire system. If the main hunting season has systematically failed to meet its objectives for over 30 years and the special hunt has been institutionalized as an annual correction mechanism, then the system does not work. A regulation that permanently reproduces its own necessity is not regulation.

«Without the special hunt, forests would suffer from wildlife browsing.» Wildlife browsing is real – but its cause is not too much wildlife, but too little undisturbed space. Driven hunts and battues push deer and roe deer into refuge areas, where they consume available vegetation under increased stress. The hunting-free National Park in Graubünden demonstrates that stable forest-wildlife systems can develop without shooting quotas when natural predators and undisturbed behavioral spaces are present.

«The special hunt is properly regulated under animal welfare law.» Killing pregnant and leading females, allowing fetuses to die in the womb, and disrupting social structures during winter rest does not correspond to the spirit of animal welfare law that recognizes the «dignity of creatures» as a constitutional principle. That this practice is legal reveals the limits of current animal welfare law – not its ethical acceptability.

«The 2019 referendum democratically confirmed the special hunt.» The referendum took place under conditions where crucial information had been withheld from Parliament and the public – namely the FOEN assessment that the initiative did not violate superior law. A democratic process based on incomplete information provides no substantive legitimacy for the voting result.

«Wolves are the real problem, not hunting.» At the Calanda massif, deer density in the wolf area decreased by one-third since 2011, while it increased by 18 percent canton-wide. A study of 3,000 wolf scats shows that livestock accounts for less than 1 percent of prey. Wolves are not the problem in Graubünden; if allowed, they would be a central part of the solution.

«The special hunt finances itself.» This calculation ignores all external costs: wildlife damage compensation, protective forest subsidies, state control costs, legal proceeding costs, and costs from hunting pressure-induced wildlife concentration and browsing. An honest overall accounting is outstanding – and the hunting lobby has no interest in having it done.

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The special hunt in Graubünden is not a regulatory instrument. It is the annually recurring evidence that the Graubünden hunting system has been unable to meet its own planning objectives since the introduction of the cantonal hunting law in 1989, and that it institutionally manages this failure instead of remedying it. The popular initiative of 2019 showed that civil society resistance with over 10,000 signatures is possible, but was politically slowed down under conditions of incomplete information, and this resistance continued with the follow-up initiative by Wildlife Protection Switzerland. The hunt-free Swiss National Park and the Calanda pack have been demonstrating for years that stable wildlife populations and natural forest regeneration without hobby hunting are not the exception – but the rule.

The consequence here is also logical: Anyone who wants genuine wildlife regulation must decouple it from hunting quotas, base it on scientific foundations, and subject it to independent oversight. The special hunt is not the emergency exit of a functioning system; it is visible proof that the system must be fundamentally reconsidered. This dossier will be continuously updated when new figures, studies, or political developments require it.

More on the topic of hobby hunting: In our Hunting Dossier we compile fact checks, analyses, and background reports.