Germany: 80’000 hunting offences recorded in ten years
It is actually a criminal offence to kill the parent animals needed to raise young — yet this is precisely what happens thousands of times over in Germany, and to date it is almost never prosecuted.
As early as the end of January, the period begins during which foxes give birth to their first young. The so-called breeding and birthing season reaches its peak during the spring months. Roe deer drop their fawns mostly from the end of May, and brown hares between March and October. Wild boar, whose social structures are usually destroyed by hunting, give birth to piglets all year round.
In January and February, so-called fox weeks take place in many of the approximately 60,000 hunting districts. These are intensive, cross-district driven hunts organised with the aim of killing as many foxes as possible. This is particularly easy at this time of year because the animals are less cautious due to the ongoing mating season, and the full moon illuminates the usually snow-covered ground. At these events, large numbers of male foxes — and certainly also vixens already nursing cubs — are shot. It is widely known that male foxes are also essential for raising the young, as they are usually the family’s main provider.
So far it has been difficult to near-impossible to provide court-admissible evidence on this matter. It is not sufficient to convince prosecutors and courts that, given the sheer number of animals shot, parent animals are inevitably among them. For each individual animal, it must be proven that it was a parent. To date, this succeeds only in isolated cases.
Wildtierschutz Deutschland and other animal and nature conservation organisations regularly report numerous hunting offences each spring, including in the context of trap hunting.
«We suspect that at least 80,000 hunting offences occur in Germany every year. All it takes is for two per cent of the more than 380,000 hunters to each kill ten animals during breeding seasons or closed seasons, or to take them in some other manner that violates hunting ethics.»
Lovis Kauertz from Wildtierschutz Deutschland e.V.
This is a cautious, not exaggerated estimate. Studies show that during driven hunts alone, thousands of roe deer, red deer, and wild boar are not killed «in a proper hunting manner» — that is, in violation of regulations or even criminal law. Court-admissible evidence is, again, almost impossible to obtain in individual cases.»
Hunting offences committed in the course of regular hunting operations are apparently also tolerated by legislators — otherwise they would designate corresponding closed seasons. For example, the hunting season for the endangered brown hare begins as early as October, when many does are still nursing their young. Wild boar have had no closed seasons at all since the scaremongering over African swine fever, and in most German federal states, foxes and raccoons also have no opportunity to raise their offspring without being pursued by hunters.
