Halden: Two recreational hunters shot dead, former group member confesses
In Norway, a 29-year-old opened fire on a group of recreational hunters with a hunting rifle. He had previously been a member himself, and police suspect a conflict.
On Sunday morning, 4 October 2026, between 07:00 and 07:30, 14 recreational hunters were standing in a farmyard east of Lake Ørsjøen, in the far south of the Norwegian municipality of Halden, close to the border with Sweden.
They were about to be assigned their posts for the day's hunt. Then shots rang out. A man in his seventies and his son in his forties died at the scene, and another man in his forties was seriously injured and, according to Police, was flown by air ambulance to Kalnes Hospital.
A 29-year-old man from Halden was arrested. According to consistent reports by VG, TV 2 and the news agency NTB, he had previously been a member of this very hunting group himself. It is not known when or why he left.
What police have confirmed so far
According to the Øst police district, the accused fired with a hunting rifle and put the weapon down himself after the shots were fired. Members of the hunting group kept him under watch until police arrived. According to police lawyer Anders Svarholt, he held a firearms licence for two weapons, as Aftenposten reports. The man was not previously known to police.
Police believe a conflict was the trigger. There is a connection between the accused and the hunting group, and interviews have provided information supporting this theory, police stated on Sunday evening. Police have not disclosed the nature of the conflict. All members of the hunting group have been granted victim status.
The charges are two counts of homicide and attempted homicide. According to police, the accused admitted in a written statement to firing the fatal shots and the shot that wounded the third person. His defence lawyer says he denies the attempted killing. He remains silent on the motive and has refused to be questioned by police. Due to the severity of the act, police ordered a preliminary forensic-psychiatric examination. The court will decide on remand in custody on Monday in written proceedings.
Shots that at first no one thought much of
A resident told Dagbladet that he had barely registered the shots at first: moose hunting season was underway in the area, and shots are an everyday occurrence in autumn. It was only when ambulances and helicopters arrived that it became clear what had happened.
For the police, the situation was initially confusing, as several armed recreational hunters were on site. They deployed a large contingent, including a special unit, armoured vehicles, helicopters, drones and dog squads. Other hunting groups in the area were asked not to let their dogs run in the cordoned-off zone.
Context: Legally armed, and no one checks up
Our sympathy goes out to the relatives of those killed and to the injured man. Wild beim Wild does not speculate on the motive; investigations are ongoing.
According to the current state of the investigation, this was not a chance encounter: police see a connection between the accused and the hunting group and are pursuing a conflict as the main line of inquiry. The man was legally armed and apparently knew the location and time of the meeting. Firearms licensing checks the requirements at the time of the decision. Whether subsequent rifts, crises or threat situations are recognised is a separate question of prevention and firearms law, in Norway as in Switzerland.
Wild beim Wild has for years documented Hunting Accidents and Fatal Crimes Involving Recreational Hunter Weapons. We have described in detail how hunting weapons in private households become a silent backdrop of threat, why there is a lack of a systematic weapons check when dealing with potentially dangerous individuals, and what the analysis of firearm killings in Switzerland reveals.
In Switzerland, too, the hunting season is currently underway. We continue to track incidents in our overviews for Grisons, the Ticino and the Valais. The question raised by Halden also arises here: Switzerland has no nationwide, periodic reassessment of all private weapon owners. Authorities can only intervene when there are concrete indications of a risk to oneself or others.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland we document cases, legal questions and recurring patterns. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
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.
All articles are written by IG Wild beim Wild as well as by external co-authors. Research, structuring and editorial processes may be supported by AI-assisted tools.
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