GPS sow betrayed wild boars: recreational hunter shot fellow hunter

On 29 November 2024, six recreational hunters met in the Gros-de-Vaud for a wild boar hunt.

An initial stalk in the Daillens area had yielded no quarry. In the early afternoon, the group moved to Oulens-sous-Échallens, where wild boars had been sighted. The game warden had supplied the information: a GPS collar had been fitted to a sow in the sounder, revealing the group's whereabouts. Shortly afterwards, a 64-year-old recreational hunter from the canton of Fribourg was dead, struck in the head by an illegal “deterrent shot” fired by an 80-year-old colleague.

The real scandal: fitting wild animals with transmitters in order to kill them more easily

GPS radio collaring of wild animals was originally a tool of wildlife research. Institutes such as KORA use collar transmitters to scientifically record movement patterns, habitat use and population dynamics. But when authorities pass such data directly to recreational hunting groups so that they can specifically track down and shoot a sounder, research is repurposed into an instrument of persecution.

In the Oulens-sous-Échallens case, the game warden handed the recreational hunters the animals' location because a sow had been radio-collared. It was therefore not woodcraft, patient stalking or tracking that found the wild boars, but a satellite signal from a collar that the sow was forced to carry. The animals had no means of countering this technological surveillance. They withdrew, as wild animals do, into dense bramble thickets, a refuge inaccessible to humans. And it was precisely there that they were tracked down via their radio-collared lead sows.

This practice has nothing to do with traditional hunting. It turns wild animals into data points and recreational hunters into receivers who need only follow the signal. It reveals convenience and incompetence, not hunting skill. And it violates the spirit of Article 51 of the Vaud Hunting and Fishing Act, which prohibits the use of artificial means to track or lure game, even if the official radio collaring may formally be declared as “monitoring”.

Three legal provisions broken in one go

When the radio-collared sounder got stuck in a dense thorn thicket on a hill and the 80-year-old's dog also failed to return from the undergrowth, he decided to drive the game away with shots in order to protect his dog. He had previously lost hunting dogs during wild boar hunts. This decision violated three provisions of the cantonal hunting and fisheries act at once:

• Article 49 requires that the targeted animal be clearly identified before the shot is fired and that the shot endanger no one, either directly or indirectly.
• Article 51 paragraph 1 prohibits artificial means of deterring or attracting game.
• Article 46 expressly prohibits firing shots to scare away game. The accused was aware of this provision.

The 80-year-old nevertheless fired two shots towards the ground, without looking through his scope, without being able to see what was behind or within the thorns, and without identifying the wild animals themselves. A technical failure compounded the situation: the angle between the barrel and the ground was 6.3°. The recommendations of the Swiss hunting authority, however, require at least 10° so that a ground shot actually lodges in the earth and is not deflected. One of the two shots fatally struck the 64-year-old recreational hunter from Fribourg in the head; he was positioned as a shooter below the hill.

Role of the authority: when the game warden becomes the supplier

The real systemic scandal lies not only with the individual shooter, but in the entanglement between the cantonal wildlife wardens and the recreational hunting association. The game warden who had supplied the GPS data of the radio-collared sow is a member of the cantonal service. He passed this information to a group of private recreational hunters, one of whom was a former president of the cantonal hunting association Diana Vaud and a former municipal councillor. Personal and institutional proximity between association officials and the wildlife wardens is the rule, not the exception, in licence-hunting cantons.

This raises fundamental questions: What legal basis exists in the canton of Vaud for the radio collaring of wild boars by the authorities? Are the movement data from these transmitters systematically passed on to recreational hunting groups in order to facilitate the "removal" of populations? How many wild animals in the canton currently carry transmitters whose data is used in recreational hunting contexts? And how does this practice relate to Article 51 of the cantonal law, which prohibits artificial aids for tracking game?

These questions have not been raised in media coverage to date. However, they are central to placing the Oulens-sous-Échallens case in a political context.

Animal welfare dimension: stress, separation of piglets, ricochets

Even if the fatal shot had not hit the 64-year-old recreational hunter, the practice would have violated animal welfare law. Article 4 of the Animal Welfare Act (TSchG) prohibits inflicting unjustified pain, suffering or harm on an animal. Shots fired into a thicket in which a sow is hiding with potential piglets structurally fulfil this offence: wild animals panic, can be wounded without any follow-up search, sows can be separated from their piglets, and ricochets can hit animals that were not being targeted.

In addition, there is the ethical aspect of the radio collaring itself. Wild animals are captured, anaesthetised and fitted with a collar for research purposes. This intervention is justifiable in a research context if it serves a clear scientific purpose and is carried out with due care. If, however, the data obtained in this way is then used to kill the animals in a more targeted manner, the original intervention retrospectively becomes a form of betrayal: the animal was marked in trust of scientific monitoring and ends up as a traceable target.

Court date: 21 May 2026 in Yverdon-les-Bains

The trial against the 80-year-old recreational hunter will take place on 21 May 2026 before the District Court of Broye and North Vaud in Yverdon-les-Bains. The public prosecutor is seeking a ten-month suspended custodial sentence with a two-year probation period, a fine of 2,000 francs (convertible into 20 days of imprisonment), a four-year hunting ban, and 74,439 francs in damages to the family of the killed recreational hunter. The accused has admitted the offence, waived his right of appeal and benefits from a simplified procedure. He is receiving psychological care, has voluntarily surrendered his hunting licence, and his weapons have been confiscated due to suicide risk.

Geneva model: no recreational hunting, no fatalities, no transmitter scandals

The canton of Geneva abolished recreational hunting by popular vote in 1974. Wildlife management is carried out by cantonally employed game wardens. Fatal shooting accidents such as the one in Oulens-sous-Échallens have been ruled out in Geneva for over fifty years, because no groups of private recreational hunters with long guns move collectively through rough terrain. Nor does any constellation arise in which game wardens pass on GPS data from radio-collared wild animals to private recreational hunting groups.

The Geneva model demonstrates that wildlife management is possible without recreational hunting, safer for people and more transparent, because professional wildlife wardens are subject to state supervision and not to association dynamics. Anyone who reflexively calls for “more training” after every fatal incident is ignoring the structural alternative.