Germany: recreational hunter shoots his own daughter dead

In Germany, a recreational hunter shoots his own daughter dead during a hunting trip. Fatal hunting accidents are on the rise.

Wild beim Wild editorial team · 25 January 2019

Surgery

Deadly drama in Baden-Württemberg: A father is handling his gun when suddenly a shot goes off — by accident, investigators are largely certain.

A shot went off from the 56-year-old's combination rifle as he was preparing for recreational hunting in his flat in Ettlingen, police and the public prosecutor in Karlsruhe announced. It struck his 19-year-old daughter so severely that she died in hospital.

Negligent homicide: investigation opened

According to investigations so far, it is to be assumed that this was a “tragic accident”, it was stated. The recreational hunter is now being investigated for negligent homicide. The gun was legally in his possession.

The IG Wild beim Wild has been demanding for years that recreational hunters must regularly undergo a medical and psychological aptitude test.

Why the man kept the weapon loaded at home, or handled the loaded weapon, is not known. The weapon should not have been loaded at the moment the shot went off. As a rule, firearms may only be loaded during the hunt or at the shooting range. Why recreational hunting is an animal welfare problem is explained in the dossier of the same name.

Hunting accidents: the DJV's figures are fudged

The number of hunting accidents involving firearms varies from year to year. According to research by the Initiative for the Abolition of Hunting, many people were also killed and injured in 2018.

At the German Hunting Association (DJV), members are spreading misinformation. Following the tragic accident, the following statement from the DJV can be found everywhere in the media: “The number of hunting accidents involving firearms varies from year to year. According to figures from the German Hunting Association, two people were killed and two injured in 2017.” To counter this hunters' tall tales, here are the facts — there are at least 30 dead. It is striking that women in recreational hunter families in particular live extremely dangerous lives.

In Switzerland too: recreational hunters endanger human lives

“How many more people must die or be seriously injured before recreational hunting is finally banned?”, says Carl Sonnthal for the IG Wild beim Wild. “Year after year, numerous tragedies occur because trigger-happy fun hunters blast away irresponsibly across the countryside. Intervention by the legislator is long overdue.”

IG Wild beim Wild points out that every year not only is considerable suffering inflicted on thousands of animals through missed shots, but also several dozen people are killed and injured by recreational hunters. Not infrequently, the recreational hunters are intoxicated.

In Switzerland too, every year more people are injured and killed by the high-risk group of recreational hunters than by Islamic terrorists, sects, the mafia and biker gangs combined.

Between 2011 and 2015, a total of 1’526 injuries from hunting accidents were registered by the accident insurers. In addition, at least a good dozen deaths — and this only within the recreational hunting community! The endangerment of third parties by recreational hunters cannot be determined from the accident insurers' data. There are likewise no statistics offering more detailed analyses for the various cantons. More on this in the category Crime & Hunting.

More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland we document cases, legal questions and recurring patterns. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.

The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.