Recreational hunter fired at soldiers during military exercise
German and Austrian soldiers from the Jagdkommando were training in the forest when they encountered a 68-year-old recreational hunter.
Feeling threatened by individuals in camouflage clothing, a 68-year-old recreational hunter fired a shot from her rifle over the weekend in a forest near Friesach in Austria.
The reason for the perceived threat turned out, on closer inspection, to be harmless: the individuals in question were soldiers of the German Bundeswehr conducting a military exercise.
Weapons ban imposed
Police had been called to the forest. The 68-year-old had fired a live round — whether she had aimed in the direction of the military personnel or fired into the air had not yet been established and was the subject of an ongoing investigation. In any case, a provisional weapons ban was imposed on the recreational hunter.
The exercise has been taking place in the St. Veit district since last week, with soldiers from the Austrian Armed Forces participating alongside members of the German Bundeswehr. The exercise had already been conducted in Carinthia on several previous occasions and had, as required, been duly registered with the district authority of St. Veit by the Armed Forces.
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.
