Hobby hunters mistreat humanity's heritage

Hobby hunters like to portray themselves, without justification, as protectors of animals, nature, and species.

These hobby hunters tell the public about their understanding of nature, claiming that self-regulation no longer functions in our cultivated landscape and that the good hobby hunter must take over the role of extinct predators (lynx, wolf, birds of prey, etc.) and regulate wildlife in order to protect nature. Yet no animal species has ever driven another to extinction — unlike hobby hunters.

But are hobby hunters truly the heroes of nature they claim to be? Is this understanding of nature not based far more on assumptions that have been scientifically recognized as false for many years? Must nature, with its various wildlife, not be protected from hobby hunters and their specious arguments and base motives? It has long been scientifically established that recreational hunting and hunters' tall tales are enemy number two of biodiversity, after industrial agriculture.

The modern state of knowledge in ecology and wildlife biology shows that population density among wild animals also regulates itself dynamically — based on food supply, territoriality, climate, disease, resources, and social and physiological factors, etc. — without human intervention, provided it is not shot to pieces! Hunting pressure, improper hunting practices, and other factors, on the other hand, increase the reproduction rate of the affected animal populations — something observable not only in wild boar, foxes, roe deer, red deer, and pigeons, but in every species (species preservation, survival instinct, compensatory reproduction, etc.).

Hobby hunters cause far more damage than the animals they pursue themselves. Does the hobby hunter thus not impose a brutal yoke upon wildlife?

The umbrella organisation of hobby hunters in Switzerland wrote on 29.8.2011: «JagdSchweiz knows that wildlife populations would fundamentally regulate themselves – even in our cultivated landscape – without human intervention.»

Nevertheless, the friends of animal cruelty remain unimpressed by basic wildlife biology findings, ecology, animal welfare, and ethical conduct.

Practically everything that is contrary to animal welfare, cruel, unnecessary, and heartless is considered appropriate hunting practice.

IG Wild beim Wild

Hobby hunters are like a plague upon wildlife, regularly producing mass death under the guise of nature, species, and animal protection. With hobby hunters, wild animals have no right to be old, young, injured, or sick and to recover. With hobby hunters, there is no right to life and evolution. Upon closer analysis, hunting has little to do with nature and animal protection.

Why are animal species whose populations are endangered and listed on the red list still hunted? What is the purpose of the allegedly urgently necessary regulation of animal populations for the protection of nature and species?

Why do hobby hunters so often target the very animals that animal and nature conservationists are trying to promote and protect through great voluntary effort and at considerable expense?

Why does the hunters' alleged “stewardship” primarily target wildlife of hunting interest? Rare bird species and predators are hardly promoted by hobby hunters — but are readily shot and poached.

There are several thousand animal species. Why do allegedly just a few species require “regulation” — primarily those that are of interest to hobby hunters (trophies, game meat, entertainment value, competitors) — and why are these species manipulated and cultivated?

How can it be that hobby hunters are permitted to inflict unnecessary suffering and pain on wild animals — something that is prohibited in any other context under the applicable animal protection law and can even be punished with imprisonment?

One of the consequences of the disgraceful activities of hobby hunters is that wild animals have by now become so shy that they can barely be seen anymore.

Today's hobby hunters are not real hunters (hunting for necessary, survival-critical food procurement and tools), but organized peculiarities, often from an environment of cronyism and nepotism. Insidious individuals who travel through the country with state-of-the-art technology, killing with intent. Modern recreational hunting has nothing to do with the skill and courage that characterize a traditional hunter.

When the practice of hunting so drastically undermines animal and nature protection, causing animals considerable suffering and pain (earth hunting, trap hunting, pass hunting, special hunting, bird hunting, trophy hunting, sport hunting, etc.), this hobby no longer has any place in a civilized and nature-oriented society.

Today's hunting destroys the normal social coexistence of wild animals, the ecological balance, their natural behavioral patterns, family structures and social bonds, use of dens and hiding places, the shift from daytime to nighttime activity, increased migration into non-hunted residential areas, unnatural concentrations of animals in forests, and more.

National parks, the Netherlands, large parts of Belgium, hunt-free islands, and many areas with a hunting ban such as Geneva demonstrate that nature and wildlife regulate themselves far more effectively through various natural factors than with hunters.

In no other canton in Switzerland has such a strong increase in biodiversity occurred in such a short period of time as in the Canton of Geneva, where a hunting ban for hobby hunters has been in place since 1974. Why is it that wherever hobby hunters are unwelcome, the problem of extreme over- or underpopulation does not exist?

Is it not recreational hunting itself that drives wild animals into the forests in the first place? Hunting makes wildlife shy. Roe deer and red deer, for example, are normally diurnal animals, seen trustingly in unhunted areas on meadows, just like other grazing animals such as sheep, goats, and cows. It is only due to hunting pressure that roe deer and red deer often come into contact with young trees, on which they cause bark-stripping and browsing damage. Yet the greater the damage, the louder the calls for more intensive hunting. The interplay between hunting and game management thus creates a vicious cycle.

Today, modern wildlife biology and science explain, based on experience and case studies, that hunting pressure can also increase wildlife populations, because the remaining animals simply increase their birth rate. The regulation of wildlife populations does not occur through hunting. Hunting is therefore not the solution, but also a cause of the alleged problems. If overpopulation in a habitat is imminent, the birth rate is reduced. If many cloven-hoofed animals are killed by hunting in autumn in a given area, those that remain have access to a better food supply. Wildlife that survives the winter in better condition reproduces earlier and in greater numbers in spring. The unnatural problems and overpopulations are caused in particular by hobby hunters themselves, so that hobby hunters can assign themselves a supposedly legal mandate.

Wildlife are not clay pigeons. Nor is it necessarily the case that unhunted wildlife causes greater damage, as can be clearly seen in hunting-free areas. On the contrary! In this context, it is also cynical and selfish to speak of damage. Wildlife, such as roe deer and red deer, do not overgraze, but simply consume vegan food, often in the very places where hobby hunters park them. No wildlife group has a more dismal ecological footprint, resource waste, and so on, than hobby hunters, foresters, or farmers. Recreational hunting does not regulate in the sense of natural abundance of wildlife populations, but instead creates inflated or suppressed populations.

Hunting is always also a form of war, one that brings out only the negative traits in human beings.

In the deer factory of Graubünden in Switzerland alone, hundreds of reports for violations of hunting legislation and administrative fines are issued every year. Practically every fifth hobby hunter is a delinquent, with a large number of unreported cases in the annual cycle. Currently, 2 popular initiatives are underway against the hunting misconduct in Graubünden.

Graubünden, with its wildlife management and hunting pressure, is traditionally not a good example of ethical wildlife management. This Alpine canton (7,105 km²) is considerably smaller in area than the Alpine cantons of Bern, Valais, Ticino and Uri combined (15,072 km²), and yet Graubünden proportionally shows ever-increasing kill figures for red deer and roe deer, populations and alleged problems with wildlife, as well as hobby hunters — all due to misguided hunting practices. In 1970, there were still 4,300 roe deer in Graubünden, whereas today the number is around 15,500. For red deer, the figure has grown from 9,000 to likewise over 15,000. Many deer are migratory animals from surrounding areas and do not truly belong to Graubünden's hobby hunters, but equally to the non-hunting population. Each year, approximately 6,000 hunters slaughter around 22,500 wild animals during the high and small game seasons. Around 1,000 tracking searches are required annually, of which only about half are successful. The venison typically ends up in the freezers of hobby hunters.

More hunting does not mean less wildlife — it means more births. Birth control is also an effective and sustainable solution in cases of genuine overpopulation. Successes in this regard can be observed in countries dealing with, for example, the stray dog problem in Europe. In Switzerland too, this problem is normally addressed in this way. To this day, 10’000 stray cats per year are neutered by animal welfare advocates in Switzerland and, when ill, also provided with medical care — which is the only animal-appropriate solution. In other regions, roe deer and red deer populations in certain areas are regulated through contraceptive vaccination, as are wild boar in other European countries. The same is done today in wildlife parks and zoos. Annually culling unnaturally large populations of living beings out of sheer joy of hunting is simply barbaric.

The hunt has failed. For decades, hobby hunters have been attempting to sustainably regulate wildlife populations, something they have to this day failed to achieve in a civilised manner. The only thing that has proven sustainable is the ever more brutal shooting. There are certain things that should not be tolerated in a civilised country.

The hunting community bears co-responsibility for the many wildlife accidents. Across Switzerland, on average one car collides with a roe deer every hour. This results in 20’000 animals involved in road accidents per year. In the process, 60 people are injured and property damage of 25 million francs is incurred. The hunting community causes far more damage than the wildlife that hobby hunters pursue. The hunting community causes personal injury (around 300 hunting accidents per year in Switzerland), environmental, property and species damage, etc., which far exceeds the average 2% browsing damage caused by wildlife to plants and timber yields in Switzerland. Credible friends of nature, animals and species do not need weapons to nurture and care for them.

Hunting is under scrutiny. It is ethically questionable and, in the view of prominent researchers, also ecologically and economically counterproductive — indeed harmful, warns the IG Wild beim Wild in conclusion.

Recreational hunting is animal cruelty and immorality. It is no coincidence that prominent animal welfare organisations regularly make great efforts to put a stop to the barbarities in the dark world of recreational hunting.

Hobby hunters — a natural disaster

In the chaos in which nature finds itself after decades of stewardship and care by recreational hunters, the proportion of threatened species is greater than in any other country in the world — in Switzerland. These contract killers have been creating an ecological imbalance in the cultivated landscape for decades, with sometimes dramatic consequences (protective forests, diseases, agricultural damage and much more). Over a third of plant, wildlife and fungal species are considered threatened. Switzerland also ranks last in Europe when it comes to designating protected areas for biodiversity. It is precisely these circles of hobby hunters, with their lobbying efforts through politics, media and legislation, who have been responsible for this for decades. They are the ones who notoriously block timely, ethical improvements in animal welfare and sabotage serious animal and species protection. Hobby hunters regularly oppose more national parks in Switzerland, because their concern is not nature, biodiversity, species conservation or animal welfare, but rather the pursuit of their perverse, bloody hobby.

Did you know …

• that in Switzerland innocent young wolves are being liquidated?
• that hobby hunters in the Assessment of Game Meat Quality lie and that processed game meat, according to the WHO, is carcinogenic like cigarettes, asbestos, or arsenic?
• that according to a study, nowhere is the lead contamination of golden eagles and bearded vultures higher than in the Swiss Alps, due to the ammunition used by hobby hunters?
• that the hunting ethics of hobby hunters diametrically contradict the Animal Protection Act and are nothing but a mirage?
• that hunting is war where animal competitors are simply eliminated?
• that there are countless illegal and unmarked hunting stands in our countryside, some so rotten that they pose a danger to children and can cause people to lose their lives?
• that year after year, countless people are killed or injured by hunters' weapons, some so severely that they are left in wheelchairs or have limbs amputated?
• that in Switzerland approximately 120,000 perfectly healthy roe deer, red deer, foxes, marmots, and chamois are killed each year, mostly for no good reason?
• that because of hobby hunters, it is today barely possible to live in harmony with wildlife or to see wild animals at all?
• that shotgun blasts make hares cry out like small children and shred the entrails of “shot” roe deer and red deer so that they leave a trail of blood for tracking purposes during their flight?
• that the claim by hobby hunters that the cruel wildlife massacres are necessary to regulate animal populations has been scientifically refuted?
• that hobby hunters openly admit that hunting is about the “pleasure of killing” and “the joy of making a kill,” a pathological obsession?
• that hobby hunters have no sixth sense and yet regularly claim they only shoot sick and weak animals, which in practice is of course not true?
• that hobby hunters travel abroad for trophy hunting, far removed from all species protection and hunting regulations, and that there are even Swiss hobby hunter travel agencies catering to such depraved hunting pursuits?
• that the overwhelming majority are not legitimate professional hunters, but pursue hunting as a hobby, sporting, and leisure activity, which is immoral and in fact contradicts the Animal Protection Act?
• that 99.07% of civilized people in Switzerland are not hobby hunters, meaning only 0.3% of hobby hunters take pleasure in these bloody activities?
• that these wildlife killers do not hunt on the basis of scientific justifications?
• that protected species actually do not belong under hunting law, because hobby hunters are overwhelmed by species conservation and repeatedly shoot animals listed on the Red List, such as lynx, wolf, hare, grey partridge, quail, etc., for fun?
• that hobby hunters deliberately decimate certain animal species in order to eliminate competition for their unnatural behavior (fox, lynx, wolf, birds of prey, etc.)?
• that wildlife dies before the hobby hunter can fire a single shot, that this must be prevented, and that this is likely the central idea behind wildlife management, care, and hunting planning?
• that among wild boar (and foxes), normally only the lead sow produces young, but due to her being shot, all female animals within the sounder reproduce, and that this is also why we have a wild boar overpopulation?
• that grazing animals — deer, roe deer, etc. — originally lived mainly as diurnal animals in fields and meadows, like goats, sheep, cows, etc., and not in forests?
• that the wolf is vitally important for the long-term health of wild ungulates, because, for example, it preys on sick or weak animals with incredible precision and is therefore vastly superior to hobby hunters?
• that foxes usually end up in the trash after being senselessly hunted?
• that foxes are hunted today primarily so that there are more hares, etc. for hobby hunters’ frying pans? That the fox, however, feeds on hares in fewer than 10% of cases and would never catch a healthy hare?
• that in animal protection, one cannot confront hobby hunters with gentleness alone, street festivals, prayer chains, etc. (you need to fight fire with fire)?
• that hobby hunters with their hunters’ tall tales engage in a disrespectful mockery of living beings?
• that it is frowned upon to shoot big game at feeding stations or during mating season, yet the hobby hunter has no qualms about doing so with the fox, a competitor for prey?
• that in some cantons, hobby hunters go hunting solely for the tender meat of a young animal?
• that hobby hunters shoot pregnant mother deer in front of their young, or only young animals during the rearing period (post-special hunt)?
• that hobby hunters poison the environment, nature, humans, and animals with their ammunition?
• that bestiality, barbarism, cruelty, bloodshed, and senseless suffering cannot be considered cultural heritage in a civilized society?
• that hobby hunters shoot approximately 10’000 roe deer fawns every year?
• that hobby hunters in harsh winters lure starving animals with bait only to shoot them in a treacherous and cowardly manner?
• that hobby hunters send agitated dogs into burrows to eliminate foxes and badgers (earth hunting)?
• that hobby hunters lure peaceful creatures into box traps, where they may suffer for days awaiting their killer, or are often subjected to an agonizing death struggle lasting hours (trap hunting)?
• that hobby hunters cowardly ambush and kill or injure peaceful wild animals while they sleep or bask in the sun, using state-of-the-art precision weapons?
• that hobby hunters support awards, fur markets, trophy cult prize ceremonies, trophy shows, fur trading, etc.?
• that hobby hunters place firearms into the hands of underage schoolchildren and practice killing with them?
• that hobby hunters often carry out their cruel acts in isolation, which encourages animal cruelty?
• that hobby hunters frequently inflict severe injuries on wild animals, leaving the victims to suffer for hours under enormous pain and fear, until a tracking dog finds them and they are shot?
• that hobby hunters (apart from vivisection) inflict the most suffering and abuse on animals, including through the manner of killing?
• that the hunter's supposed love of animals and nature does not delight in the existence of the beloved subject, but rather aims to possess the beloved creature body and soul, culminating in making it prey through the act of killing?
• that hobby hunters actively promote browsing damage through hunting pressure, particularly on predators such as fox, lynx and wolf?
• that hobby hunters open the door to antisocial, unethical and unchristian behavior?
• that hobby hunters deprive the public of normal, natural wildlife observation and interaction?
• that there is no greater torment product, contaminated with ammunition residue, than game meat?
• that across Switzerland there is no uniform regulation regarding vision tests, shooting proficiency, etc. for hobby hunters?
• that there is no psychological aptitude test for hobby hunters?
• that there is no alcohol ban for hobby hunters when they are shooting at animals with their weapons?
• that hobby hunters intrude into educational institutions to impose their hunters' jargon and their culture of violence upon children?
• that a court in Bellinzona recently confirmed that hunting associations promote virtually everything that is cruel, unnecessary and heartless?
• that the association «Jagd Schweiz» cultivates above all a culture of disrespect and violence – the exact opposite of what a civilised person in our society should aspire to.
• that in the canton of Grisons alone, more than 1’000 complaints and fines are issued against hobby hunters every year?

Interest Group Wild beim Wild

The IG Wild beim Wild is a non-profit interest group committed to the sustainable and non-violent improvement of the human-animal relationship, with a particular specialisation in the legal aspects of wildlife protection. One of our main concerns is to introduce a contemporary and serious wildlife management system in the cultivated landscape, modeled on the Canton of Geneva – without hobby hunters, but with upright wildlife wardens who truly deserve the title and act in accordance with a code of honour. The monopoly on the use of force belongs in the hands of the state. The IG supports scientific methods of immunocontraception for wildlife.