Hobby hunters: what is that?

First, we analyze exactly what a hobby hunter is, and then what a pseudo-hunter is.

The Hobby Hunter

A hobby is, according to Wikipedia, a leisure activity that a person pursues voluntarily and regularly, that serves their own pleasure or relaxation, and contributes to their self-image — that is, it forms part of their identity. The word “hobby” is derived from the English hobby horse which is translated as «hobbyhorse» in both senses — a children’s toy and a leisure pursuit.

In our part of the world, hunting is today an activity carried out primarily in the leisure time of working people. The reason for this is that nobody today needs to go hunting in order to feed themselves. The Stone Age is over.

«There is, however, no ethic today that endorses the killing of animals or the consumption of meat, since we have long been able to eat in a non-violent and healthy way without having to roam through forests and fields killing things».

IG Wild beim Wild

When people hunted in earlier times, it was done with respect for life and only to feed their own clan. Foxes, birds, and other animals were not killed for fun out of boredom, in search of relaxation, or in pursuit of recreation through a misguided idea of experiencing nature (which, upon closer analysis, doesn’t work either — see hunting fever).

No matter how you look at it, hunting in the German-speaking world takes place primarily during leisure time. This is not an invention of radical animal rights activists — it is simply a fact. Hobby hunters will always remain amateurs, because they are not professional hunters or professional wildlife wardens.

Even a retiree in a shooting club who can spend many hours each day in the forest is a hobby hunter, because he does so in his free time.

Both the hobby hunter (indoctrination, hunters' tall tales) and the wildlife warden (scientific expertise) can be well trained. However, theory is not everything. An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of theory.

It would never occur to anyone to attribute a higher quality standard to a amateur tournament with hobby soccer players than to the Champions League with professional soccer players. It is crystal clear that professional wildlife wardens bring an entirely different level to replace hobby hunters. Wildlife benefits from this through reduced animal suffering, as do the general public, nature, and the environment.

Many hobby hunters appear to already be overwhelmed by these simple connections and have great difficulty placing them in the proper mental context.

David Clavadetscher, the executive director of Jagd Schweiz, based in Zofingen, claims, for example, in a Swiss tabloid newspaper: «The term ‘hobby hunter’ was invented by militant hunting opponents to disparage the demanding work of hunters». Can he prove this, or is it once again merely hunters' tall tales?

In any case, there is nothing wrong with the terms "hobby hunter," "leisure hunter," "amateur hunter," and so on, as these terms describe a state of affairs with linguistic precision and accuracy.

The Pseudo-Hunter

The prefix pseudo , on the other hand, signals that something is not genuine but merely imitated or copied.

Pseudo is frequently used to express that a person or thing only appears to be someone or something, or gives the impression of being someone or something, while in reality it is not.

Executive director David Clavadetscher and his associates are not real hunters in the way we know them from indigenous peoples, but are also pseudo-hunters who, in their spare time, not infrequently pursue a decadent, sadistic or even cruel hobby — something that the real hunters of indigenous peoples would never condone or do themselves.

Incidentally, David Clavadetscher does not present himself publicly — symbolically, and presumably for good reason — as a hobby hunter; instead, an image circulating on the internet shows him as a businessman engaged in water sports. By the same logic, David Clavadetscher could just as well claim: «The term ‚hobby sailor‘ was invented by militant waterway protectionists to disparage the demanding activity of sailors». How absurd.

David Clavadetscher and his organization Jagd Schweiz are deeply rooted in the criminality of its members (hobby hunters). A new tactic of this militant organization is to silence fact-based criticism from peaceful citizens with arbitrary complaints .

Mr. David Clavadetscher also personally contacts journalists who write objectively or critically about hunting in an unpleasant manner, with incoherent leaps of thought. It takes real backbone as an ordinary citizen not to succumb to the at times not merely subtle threats from hobby hunters.

The killing of animals by today's modern hobby hunter results primarily from greed, avarice, ignorance, pleasure, indifference, resentment, envy, self-importance, ostentation, braggadocio, jealousy, arrogance, ignorance, cupidity, hubris, egotism, ill will, and a general disregard for living beings.

In today's world, shaped and dominated largely by humans, it is — according to prominent scientists, researchers, wildlife biologists, and documented case studies — entirely possible and ethically responsible to leave wildlife populations to manage themselves. The canton of Geneva has practiced this modern approach to wildlife management for over 40 years. What hundreds of hobby hunters once mishandled there is now handled by a good dozen professional game wardens who intervene on a regulatory basis when necessary — rather than massacring foxes, badgers, birds, and other animals out of a joy of killing and causing suffering based on arbitrary hunting seasons.

Sanitary and therapeutic culls carried out by game wardens are not the same as regulatory hunting based on hunters' jargon or the hobby hunters' misguided notion of experiencing nature.

For the hobby hunter, the welfare of the wild animal — which has an interest in continuing to live — is not the priority. For this reason, hobby hunters should not, among other things, be given a platform in schools with children and young people for their sectarian ideology give. Because hobby hunters deliberately and systematically deceive and mislead children. If one later ends up joining a hunting party, the full extent of the reprehensible and cruel mindset and the often senseless acts (fox hunting, trophy hunting at home and abroad, driven hunting, deer drives, bird hunting, special hunting, trapping, earth hunting, hatred of predators, etc.) of hobby hunters are finally revealed — and must then be lived out.

Killing for fun can never and must never be a hobby — but rather a matter for psychiatry.

For good reason, we also do not allow pedophiles to teach in schools, even though they could certainly deliver “demanding” performances. However, both pedophiles and hobby hunters have a disturbed relationship with social norms. Both groups have always, in a most unchristian manner, targeted the most vulnerable members of society in order to unwind, relax, be at one with their nature, and so on.