Hunting licence boom: almost half a million hobby hunters in Germany

The Merkur is jubilant: Germany has more hobby hunters than ever before.

467’682 people in this country hold a hunting licence, 42 per cent more than three decades ago. Torsten Reinwald, press spokesman and deputy managing director of the German Hunting Association (DJV), was allowed to appear in the Merkur unchallenged as a «biologist» and to declare that hobby hunters do «something for biodiversity right on their own doorstep». «Applied nature conservation», he said, lies in the «DNA of hunters».

Not a single critical sentence. Not a word of dissent. Not one fatality mentioned.

Reinwald: biologist or lobbyist?

Reinwald studied biology. His degree lies in the past. His current role is a different one: he is deputy managing director and press spokesman of the German Hunting Association – a full-time lobby representing a leisure interest group with nearly half a million members. When a press spokesman supplies the media on behalf of his association, that is lobbying, not scientific expertise. The Merkur did not make this distinction. That is not an oversight, that is poor journalism.

Up to 40 fatalities per year – not a word in the Merkur

What Reinwald fails to mention and the Merkur fails to ask about: every year in Germany up to 40 people die at the hands of hobby hunters and hunters’ weapons. On top of that there are hundreds of injuries. The victims are fellow hunters, wives, neighbours, walkers, mountain hikers, mountain bikers and children at play.

Neither the hunting association nor state authorities nor the Federal Statistical Office keep statistics on deaths and injuries caused by hunting and hunters’ weapons. Fatal relationship dramas, in which hobby hunters shoot their partner or family members, count as criminal offences and appear in no official hunting-accident tally. A study by the Max Planck Institute arrives at around 100 deaths in family dramas each year in Germany, mostly involving legal weapons.

About all of this: not a word in the Merkur. Instead: «the fascination of nature».

The nature conservation myth

Reinwald's core claim that hobby hunting is “applied nature conservation” is scientifically untenable. Studies prove that intensive hunting causes the growth of many animal populations: hobby hunting destroys family groups and social structures, leads to premature sexual maturity and thus to higher birth rates.

The wildlife biologist Prof. Dr. Josef Reichholf emphasises that wildlife populations have always regulated themselves, mainly through natural environmental influences such as diseases, food availability and weather. Hobby hunting creates the very problem it claims to solve.

“Husbandry with the gun”: the Geneva counter-model

The DJV likes to invoke the statutory “duty of husbandry” – the supposed mandate to ensure healthy wildlife populations through hunting. Husbandry with the gun: shooting nature to pieces in order to protect it. Anyone who does not see this contradiction does not want to see it.

The canton of Geneva has been proving since 1974 that there is another way. Before the hunting ban, well over 400 hunting licences were sold each year. Today, twelve professional game wardens of the “Police de la nature” carry out all necessary interventions in the wildlife population – for the entire canton. The result after more than 50 years is unequivocal: biodiversity has increased markedly. The number of overwintering waterfowl has multiplied from a few hundred to around 30’000. Geneva today is home to the largest hare population and one of the last grey partridge populations in Switzerland. Red deer and wild boars, practically wiped out before the ban, have returned.

And the costs? According to fauna inspector Gottlieb Dandliker, the entire operation – including prevention of game damage and compensation to farmers – costs the taxpayer less than a cup of coffee per person per year. No additional posts were created compared with the previous system. That is genuine nature conservation. Not 400 hobby hunters with high-tech rifles and SUVs.

Access to weapons as an unspoken motive

Over a quarter of the new hunting licence holders had no prior experience with hunting whatsoever, and almost as many come from the city. What the DJV does not ask about: the hunting licence is one of the most accessible legal routes to dangerous weapons in Germany. With a valid hunting licence, holders may acquire and own licensable long guns as well as two handguns. That this motive appears in no DJV survey is no coincidence.

High-tech instead of skill

What hobby hunters carry into the forest today has nothing in common with what an indigenous people understands by hunting. Thermal imaging cameras detect animals in total darkness, GPS-networked wildlife cameras record animal movements around the clock, AI-assisted rifle scopes automatically handle distance measurement and ballistics calculation. The US company Tracking Point developed “Smart Rifles”, where the shooter only has to mark the target. The shot is released by itself once the aim point is correct, even at distances of over 900 metres. Add to that the heavy SUV as a hunting-ground vehicle.

An indigenous people needs none of this. Today's hobby hunter would be lost without this arsenal. What he engages in is not an experience of nature. It is technologically upgraded leisure killing.

Game meat: lead, carcinogens and the WHO

For most people, game meat is simply inedible without days of marinating, intensive seasoning or further processing into sausages and smoked products. No one eats it raw – that is reserved for predators, who need neither fire nor a kitchen. In practice, this places game meat squarely in the category that the World Health Organization (WHO) has classified as a Group 1 carcinogen: processed red meat, in the same risk class as arsenic, asbestos and tobacco smoke.

Anyone who fails to understand these simple, scientifically proven connections, or deliberately conceals them, has no business in nature. An association that mentions WHO warnings neither in its hunting training nor in its press releases is not running a nature conservation organisation. It is running a cult and, alongside the wild animals, is quite deliberately harming its own members as well.

Added to this are metal residues from the ammunition. The problem is structurally unsolvable: lead-based ammunition demonstrably leaves elevated lead levels in the wound channel and the surrounding tissue. But even the much-praised “lead-free” alternatives – copper, zinc, tungsten, tin – do not solve the problem, they merely shift it. Studies show that released zinc and copper ions from alternative ammunition can be highly toxic to certain organisms. Even the US Army introduced tungsten-based training rounds as a “less toxic” alternative, but ended their procurement after later studies cast doubt on their harmlessness. The fundamental problem remains: anyone who shoots metal projectiles into an animal that is then meant to be eaten inevitably introduces heavy metals into the food. Lead-free does not mean toxin-free.

In Germany, lead ammunition is already banned for hunting in several federal states, and in Lower Saxony fully so since April 2025. The hunting lobby celebrates this as progress. What it conceals: the ammunition problem persists. Added to this is uncontrolled hygiene during the processing of game in the field, and the fact that 60 per cent of known human infectious diseases are of animal origin. Game processing operations are subject to far less stringent controls than slaughterhouses. The risks of game meat are a health issue in their own right, one that the DJV consistently conceals.

A law from the era of Gleichschaltung

With the Reich Hunting Act of 1934, hunting associations were dissolved, their members forced into the “Reichsbund Deutsche Jägerschaft” and the hunting community brought into line. Göring adopted the Prussian template and furnished it with a preamble full of Nazi ideology. Today’s Federal Hunting Act is founded on this basis.

The Merkur article is association communication dressed up as journalism. Torsten Reinwald was allowed to appear unchallenged as a “biologist”, although his main occupation is that of a lobbyist. Up to 40 deaths a year from hunters’ weapons: not a word. The scientifically proven self-regulation of nature: not a word. The Geneva counter-model: not a word. The hunting licence as access to weapons: not a word. The high-tech arsenal: not a word. The WHO classification and ammunition risks: not a word.

Instead: “Applied conservation”. “The DNA of hunters”. “Biodiversity right on your own doorstep”.

This is stultification of the public, complete with a press pass.

Further background on hunting legislation, on hunting accidents and violence by hobby hunters and on the psychology of hobby hunting can be found at wildbeimwild.com.