Why animal welfare law ends at the forest edge

In Swiss slaughterhouses, it is clearly regulated that no animal may bleed out without prior anesthesia. Even crustaceans and fish have been protected since 2022. Different rules apply to recreational hunting: Wild animals regularly die without anesthesia, in mortal terror, in pain and often after long flight phases. This dossier shows with legal foundations, studies and figures how little protection wild animals actually have at the moment and what would need to change so that their dying no longer remains a blind spot of legislation.

What to expect here

Legal framework: How Swiss animal welfare law prescribes mandatory anesthesia while simultaneously exempting recreational hunting. Why wild animals are legally less protected than slaughter animals.
Death process: What actually happens during recreational hunting, from the chase through the glancing shot to the failed tracking, and why mortal terror is not a mishap but part of the system.
Numbers and studies: What the STS report, federal hunting statistics and research data reveal about missed shots, flight distances and tracking quotas.
Dignity in dying: Why the death process in recreational hunting is incompatible with any standard we consider appropriate in palliative medicine, veterinary medicine or ethics.
Arguments: Responses to the most common objections from the recreational hunting lobby.
Quick links: All relevant articles, studies and sources at a glance.

Mandatory anesthesia: Who is protected and who is not

Switzerland takes the protection of animals during slaughter seriously on paper. Art. 21 Para. 1 of the Animal Welfare Act (TSchG) stipulates that slaughter animals must be stunned before bleeding. Art. 178 Para. 1 of the Animal Welfare Ordinance (TSchV) extends this obligation to all vertebrates: they may only be killed under anesthesia unless an emergency situation exists. Since the revision of the Ordinance on Animal Welfare during Slaughter (VTSchS) as of January 1, 2022, explicit regulations also apply to fish and crustaceans. Anyone who violates the stunning requirement fulfills the criminal offense of improper slaughter (Art. 177ff. TSchV in conjunction with Art. 28 Para. 1 lit. f or lit. g TSchG). Faulty stunning is generally considered mistreatment.

But precisely here the legislator creates an exception that has enormous consequences in everyday practice. Art. 178a Para. 1 lit. a TSchV exempts recreational hunting from the stunning requirement. The shot from a distance replaces stunning, at least in theory. The Foundation for the Animal in Law (TIR) formulates it unambiguously: Hunting is exempted from the stunning requirement, even if the killing method used does not immediately render the animal unconscious and insensible.

In practice, this exception means that wild animals are legally less protected than domestic cattle, chickens or lobsters in cooking pots. What would be considered contrary to animal welfare and punishable in slaughterhouses, namely letting an animal bleed to death while fully conscious, is permitted in hunting grounds. This unequal treatment reveals a hierarchy of compassion: animals we see in stables receive minimal standards. Animals that live 'outside' lose rights as soon as a hobby hunter loads their rifle. Anyone who takes animal welfare seriously must openly acknowledge this disparity.

More on this: Hunting and Animal Welfare: What Practice Does to Wild Animals

Mortal fear is part of the system

Hunting romanticism tells of 'quick, clean shots' that allegedly kill the animal 'instantly.' Reality begins earlier, at the moment the animal notices it is being pursued. Drive and battue hunts are organized panic from the wildlife's perspective: flight over long distances, overexertion, disorientation and the feeling that familiar surroundings have suddenly become life-threatening. Mortal fear is not an accident, but an integral part of the process.

Even with stand hunting, where the hobby hunter wants to shoot 'surprisingly,' a structural problem remains: no shot is perfect, no animal a static target on a shooting range. Small deviations in distance, wind, movement or rest are enough for the hit to be non-fatal, but 'only' wounding. For the affected animal, this makes the difference between an immediate end and hours or days full of pain.

The dying process, which is rarely discussed publicly, looks specifically like this: deer with shot-up legs fleeing into the forest. Stags with gut shots that bleed internally. Foxes with shattered jaws that can neither eat nor hunt. All of these are not theoretical extreme cases, but the dark side of every recreational activity with firearms. Additionally, animals fleeing in panic release large amounts of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. The metabolism collapses, the musculature becomes acidic. This promotes tough, watery meat with reduced quality, a sharp contradiction to the narrative that recreational hunting produces 'noble, healthy' game meat.

More on this: Psychology of Hunting and Drive Hunting in Switzerland

Grazing shots and tracking: What the numbers say

Official hunting statistics sound orderly: In hunting year 2023, around 30,000 hobby hunters in Switzerland killed around 76,000 wild ungulates (roe deer, red deer, chamois, wild boar) as well as nearly 22,000 predators (red fox, badger, pine marten, stone marten). In total, almost 100,000 animals were shot. Switzerland is estimated to be home to 135,000 roe deer, 40,000 red deer and 86,000 chamois.

Those animals that are hit but never recovered remain invisible. The Swiss Animal Protection STS has systematically investigated this problem in its report 'Wounding shots and tracking on Swiss hunts'.

Key findings of the STS report

The success rate of tracking wounded game ranges from only 35 to 65 percent depending on the canton. Around half of the animals wounded during recreational hunting can never be put out of their misery despite tracking efforts. According to federal hunting statistics, a total of 334 dead wild animals with gunshot wounds were found in 2014, including 30 red deer, 191 roe deer and 15 chamois. The STS calls these finds the 'tip of the iceberg'.

An extrapolation based on data from the canton of Graubünden (where approximately 6 percent of shot animals are annually reported as wounded but not killed) results in an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 wounded animals nationwide per year that flee injured. Nine out of 26 cantons refused to provide the STS with any information despite reference to the freedom of information law. Some cantons have neither a reporting requirement for tracking nor data on their success rates.

International comparative data

A Danish study (Elmeros et al., 2012, European Journal of Wildlife Research) showed that around 25 percent of foxes killed and found dead there carried traces of previous shootings in their bodies: individual pellets that had survived encapsulated. Comparable systematic data for Switzerland does not exist.

The German Veterinary Association for Animal Protection (TVT) states in its position paper on 'Animal protection and driven hunts' that during driven hunts, depending on the evaluation, up to around 70 percent of shot animals are not immediately dead but flee wounded. In a large German study (research team led by Anja Martin, over 2,000 evaluated shots of roe deer and wild boar), 30 to 40 percent of animals flee significantly further than ten meters after being hit, depending on species and ammunition type. For roe deer shot in the head or thorax, flight distances during driven hunts were significantly longer than during stand or stalking hunts.

What happens to a wounded animal

Wounding shots and tracking appear only rudimentarily in statistics in many cantons. What happens to an animal that has been grazed and is never found again? It flees as long as it has strength, hides, suffers. Open bone fractures, internal bleeding, shot organs or jaws rarely lead to quick death. Frequently these animals die over days or weeks from infections, from hypothermia, from hunger because they can no longer eat. The mandatory tracking, meaning the later pursuit of injured animals with dogs, is gladly presented as evidence of hunting responsibility. But every tracking operation is an admission of a preceding error. And it too often fails: tracks disappear, terrain structures are confusing, weather changes, animals cross hunting ground boundaries.

All those that are never found again disappear from the moral horizon, even though they represent exactly that mortal fear and agony that animal protection law is supposed to prevent.

More on this: Unprofessional Swiss hunting administrations and Hunting and animal cruelty

'Putting out of misery' or killing? The language of recreational hunting

Linguistically, recreational hunting likes to present a soft face. Animals are 'released', 'removed', 'brought to bag', as if dealing with a technical routine. Hobby hunters rarely say simply: 'I killed this animal.' The choice of words is no coincidence, but a psychological protective shield. Those who regularly kill without existentially depending on the meat must above all explain to themselves why this should be acceptable.

From an animal ethics perspective, the core conflict is clear: When someone pursues and kills animals in their spare time, even though they could easily nourish themselves with plants or from existing sources, it's not about necessity, but about pleasure, tradition and identity. The figure of 'releasing' serves as a moral softener. One doesn't take the animal's life, but supposedly only its suffering. That this suffering is often created by recreational hunting itself, through chasing, shots and injuries, is ignored.

Psychologically, motives such as power over life and death, dealing with one's own mortality, group membership and differentiation from a 'softened' urban society can be observed. Recreational hunting may be subjectively experienced as 'primal instinct', but objectively it remains a decision: Do I go into the forest today with a rifle to deliberately end the life of another living being, or not? Those who justify this decision with 'fun', 'passion' or 'connection to nature' should ask themselves why these feelings apparently need a death to express themselves.

More on this: Dossier 'Psychology of Hunting' and The Hobby Hunter in the 21st Century

Dying process: Palliative medicine, veterinary medicine and recreational hunting compared

In human medicine, the final phase of life is considered a particularly protected period. Palliative medicine and ethics speak of 'dying with dignity': pain should be alleviated, fear reduced, people should not be left alone. No one would seriously consider chasing a dying person in the forest, shooting them and then leaving them to themselves.

Veterinary recommendations for euthanasia also emphasize calm, pain-free or low-pain procedures, the most familiar environment possible, avoiding panic and accompaniment by caregivers. Even in guides for pet owners, it states that animals should die as anxiety-free as possible, without struggle and without stress.

When this understanding is contrasted with the dying process in recreational hunting, worlds collide. Here, dying is regularly the result of a sudden shot from a distance, without warning, without possibility of preparation, without any form of accompaniment. Not infrequently, the animals first experience chasing, driven hunts or the experience of their familiar environment being combed through by armed humans and dogs. What follows is not a 'quiet final phase', but an explosion of mortal fear: flight, disorientation, pain when the shot injures rather than kills, and often a lonely death somewhere in the thicket.

The asymmetry of interests is central: In palliative medicine, the welfare of the dying person is at the center, in veterinary medicine the welfare of the animal. In recreational hunting, however, the interest of the hobby hunter dominates, in kill numbers, trophies, rituals, identity. The animal is an object of a leisure activity, not a subject of a dying process that would need protection. If we seriously applied the same standards formulated in palliative medicine and animal ethics to wild animals, the majority of today's recreational hunting would simply be untenable.

More on this: Hunting myths: 12 claims you should critically examine and Hunting and biodiversity: How recreational hunting endangers species diversity

Professional wildlife management instead of hobby shooters: The Geneva model

There are situations where intervention in wildlife populations seems not entirely avoidable: traffic and safety risks, severely injured animals after collisions, individual animals with proven, concrete damage. The question is who conducts such interventions and under what mandate.

A hobby hunter who is simultaneously an interest representative of their scene inevitably has conflicts of interest. A professional wildlife management service, by contrast, works within the framework of a clear legal mandate, with training, oversight and reporting obligations. The Canton of Geneva, which has operated without militia hunting since 1974 and relies on professional wildlife managers, demonstrates that the killing of wild animals does not necessarily have to be outsourced to private recreational actors.

Where professional wildlife management is responsible, the boundary between 'hunting for pleasure' and necessary hazard prevention does not blur in the same way. This does not mean that every shot is automatically animal welfare compliant, but it reduces the influence of a lobby that portrays itself as indispensable. Anyone seriously arguing that animals must be 'put out of their misery' should necessarily demand that this be done by professionals with demonstrable competence and strict oversight, not by people who shoot everything that fits the pattern on weekends with colleagues, trophy pressure and group dynamics breathing down their necks.

The STS report documents the oversight problem: In the hunting district cantons, hunting supervision is not carried out by state-employed wildlife managers, but by a chairman appointed by the respective hunting districts themselves. From the STS perspective, this raises questions about possible bias.

More on this: Canton Geneva: Wildlife management without hobby hunting and Alternatives to hunting: What really helps without killing animals

What would need to change

If the principle is taken seriously that animals should not die in mortal fear and under avoidable suffering, the hunting reality in Switzerland cannot be defended. Six concrete approaches.

Review hunting exemption: The exemption of hobby hunting from the stunning requirement (Art. 178a Para. 1 lit. a TSchV) is the core of the problem. Of course, no classical slaughter stunning can be replicated in the forest, but the standard should be clear: No recreational hunting system may structurally produce more suffering than is technically avoidable. This would require short shooting distances, strict weapon and ammunition specifications, comprehensive documentation obligations and harsh sanctions for missed shots, and would call into question many currently common hunting practices.
Transparency about wounding shots: Honest statistics would have to record nationwide and uniformly how many animals are wounded, how many are dispatched through follow-up tracking, how many are never found. The STS demands an explicit obligation to track wounded game regulated in the federal hunting law, a reporting obligation and public transparency about success rates. The fact that nine cantons refused the STS any information despite freedom of information laws shows how far removed practice is from this.
Separate hobby hunting and professional hazard prevention: What is truly necessary belongs in the hands of independent wildlife management. Everything else is dispensable recreational activity at the expense of the vulnerable. The Geneva model proves this works.
Restrict drive hunts: The data is clear: drive and battue hunts systematically produce more missed shots, longer flight distances and more animal suffering than other hunting methods. A ban on shotgun shots on roe deer and wild boar, as demanded by the STS, would be a minimum step.
Independent hunting supervision: Hunting supervision must be organized in a state-controlled, independent and accountable manner, not through chairmen appointed by the hunting associations themselves.
Establish true cost accounting: Society must know what recreational hunting costs, not just in francs for game management and administration, but in animal suffering, missed shots and lost ecosystem services.
Model motions: Template texts for hunting-critical motions and Zero tolerance for alcohol and drugs in recreational hunting

Arguments

«A clean shot violates no animal welfare.» A technically perfect, instantly lethal shot would theoretically be less problematic. In practice, however, it is not the norm but the exception. The Martin study shows: 30 to 40 percent of hit animals still flee more than ten meters. The TVT speaks of up to 70 percent of non-instantly lethal hits in driven hunts. Animal welfare law must be measured against the norm, not against the ideal image of the recreational hunting lobby.

«Hunting is necessary to regulate populations.» This claim is disputed. Ecosystems with intact predators, natural selection and adapted land use can function without widespread recreational hunting. Where interventions are necessary, professional game management can intervene without requiring 30,000 recreational hunters with trophy interests. The Geneva model has been working for over 50 years.

«Do wild animals suffer more during hunting than in slaughterhouses?» The situations cannot be compared one-to-one, but one thing is clear: In slaughterhouses there is a stunning requirement and controlled procedures. In recreational hunting, pursuit, mortal fear and a considerable risk of non-fatal shots are part of the system. The tracking rate of 35 to 65 percent means: Up to half of all wounded animals are never put out of their misery.

«Hunting can be regulated so that animals hardly suffer.» Suffering can be reduced, but not to a minimum comparable to stunning in slaughterhouses. As long as shots are fired from a distance with firearms at fleeing or unpredictably reacting animals, mortal fear, missed shots and failed tracking remain part of the system.

«Isn't it hypocritical to eat meat and reject recreational hunting?» What is hypocritical is demanding strict animal welfare standards for livestock and suddenly accepting exceptions for wild animals. This makes it particularly clear how arbitrary it is to protect wild animals less well than animals in stalls. The most consistent answer remains: Less or no meat, and no recreational activities that make death and suffering into entertainment.

«Does mortal fear affect the quality of game meat?» Yes. Animals that flee in panic release large amounts of stress hormones. The metabolism collapses, the muscles become over-acidic. The result is inferior quality meat, a contradiction to the marketing narrative of «noble venison».

«Hunting is deeply rooted in our culture.» Tradition is no argument for continuing practices that are untenable by today's ethical and scientific standards. Bear fights, cockfights and fox hunting were also culturally embedded before societies recognized that animal suffering is not a cultural asset.

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Our Mission

Wild animals deserve the same protection from suffering and fear of death that we grant farm animals in slaughterhouses. This dossier documents how Swiss animal welfare law ends at the forest edge, why recreational hunting structurally produces more suffering than would be technically avoidable, and why professional wildlife management remains the only path compatible with honest animal welfare law. The dossier is continuously updated when new data, studies, or political developments require it.

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