Hobby hunters — what are they?

We first analyse what a hobby hunter is, and then what a pseudo-hunter is exactly.

The hobby hunter

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

In our part of the world, hunting is today an activity carried out mostly 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 nourish ourselves non-violently and healthily without having to rampage murderously through forest and field».

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 the like were not killed for amusement out of boredom, in search of relaxation, or in pursuit of recreation through a misguided notion of experiencing nature (which, upon closer analysis, does not work either — see hunting fever).

One can look at it from whatever angle one likes: hunting in the German-speaking world takes place primarily in leisure time. This is not an invention of radical animal rights activists, but simply a fact. Hobby hunters will always remain amateurs, because they are simply not professional hunters or professional wildlife wardens.

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

Both the hobby hunter (indoctrination, hunters' 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 not occur to anyone to attribute a higher quality standard to an amateur tournament with hobby footballers than to the Champions League with professional footballers. It is crystal clear that professional wildlife wardens bring an entirely different level to replace hobby hunters. Wildlife benefits from this through less animal suffering, as does the general public, nature, and the environment.

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

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

In any case, there is nothing objectionable about the terms «hobby hunter», «leisure hunter», «amateur hunter», etc., as the term describes a set of facts linguistically with precision and accuracy.

The pseudo-hunter

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

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.

Managing director David Clavadetscher and company are not real hunters in the sense we know from indigenous peoples, but are invariably also pseudo-hunters who, in their leisure time, not infrequently pursue a decadent, sadistic or even cruel hobby, something that the true hunters of indigenous peoples would never condone or engage in.

David Clavedetscher, incidentally, presents himself to the public — symbolically and presumably for good reason — not as a hobby hunter, but rather an image circulates on the internet showing him as a businessman engaged in water sports. By the same token, David Clavadetscher could also claim:«The term ‚hobby sailor‘ was constructed by militant water conservationists to disparage the demanding activity of sailors». How absurd.

David Clavadetscher and his organization JagdSchweiz are deeply rooted in thecriminality of its members (hobby hunters). A new tactic of this militant organization is to silence fact-based criticism from peaceful citizens with arbitrarycomplaints filed against them.

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 the hobby hunters.

The killing of animals by the modern hobby hunter today results primarily from greed, acquisitiveness, stupidity, pleasure-seeking, indifference, resentment, envy, self-importance, ostentation, boastfulness, jealousy, arrogance, ignorance, cupidity, conceit, egoism, ill will, and a general contempt for living beings.

In the modern environment, largely shaped and defined by humans, it is — according to renowned scientists, researchers, wildlife biologists, and documented case studies — entirely possible and ethically responsible to leave wildlife populations to regulate themselves. The canton of Geneva has been practicing this modern wildlife management for over 40 years. What hundreds of hobby hunters used to do poorly there is today handled by a good dozen professional game wardens, who intervene regulatorily when necessary, rather than massacring foxes, badgers, birds and the like out of arbitrary hunting seasons and a pleasure in killing, causing suffering in the process.

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

For hobby hunters, 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 be given a platform in schools with children and young people for their sectarian ideology either. Because hobby hunters deliberately and purposefully deceive and mislead children. If one later does become part of a hunting society, only then does the full extent of the entire abhorrent and cruel ideology and the often senseless acts (fox hunting, trophy hunting at home and abroad, driven hunting, push hunting, bird hunting, special hunting, trap hunting, earth hunting, hatred of predators, etc.) of hobby hunters reveal themselves — acts that must then be lived out.

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

For good reason, we also do not allow paedophiles to teach in schools, even though they could certainly also provide “demanding” services. However, both paedophiles and hobby hunters have a disturbed relationship with social norms. Both groups have always, in a thoroughly unchristian manner, targeted the most vulnerable within society in order to relax, unwind, be at one with nature, etc.