Jagd Schweiz demands April salaries from hobby hunters

In a memo obtained by the editorial team of IG Wild beim Wild, members of the association Jagd Schweiz are urged to transfer their entire April salary to the head office in Zofingen, or face fiery consequences.

«The association needs some serious cash right now», explained the managing director of Jagd Schweiz, David Saueressig, by telephone from Zofingen district prison in response to an enquiry from IG Wild beim Wild regarding the association's unusual appeal.

Background

During the numerous driven hunts for foxes and the like in autumn 2017, the Bitcoin craze also caught up with the hunting fraternity. Bitcoins may still carry a whiff of the disreputable. Yet the coins have long since ceased to be regarded as a means of payment solely for criminals, wrongdoers, and gamblers. «Swiss hunters simply cannot afford to miss out on this», said David Saueressig, clearly and emphatically according to an internal statement issued at the head office in Zofingen, Aargau. After all, the list of hobby hunters who have run into trouble with the law keeps growing in the hunting association's files as nicely as hemp in an indoor facility in the Bernese Oberland.

Quietly and secretly, members of the board of Jagd Schweiz began mining for Bitcoins — primarily under cover of darkness — in a first test phase beneath the floors of their own basements. After all, one cannot go hunting every day, and this seemed to the hobby hunters like a welcome change of pace during the damp and cold weather that had settled over the country. A kind of self-imposed psychological hygiene for hobby hunters had taken hold. Becoming one with nature within one's own four walls – without the crack of a rifle.

The hobby hunters manipulated underground water pipes and converted their live traps for badgers and the like into washing troughs. Before long, a genuine gold-rush atmosphere reminiscent of the Yukon Valley in Alaska in the 19th century took hold. Since beer, wine, and spirits are stored in the cellar anyway – the setup was perfect for the hobby hunters. Why haul crates of alcohol into the forest or up to a hunting blind when you can do your drinking right in your own cellar? Police checks and alcohol controls are neatly avoided that way too.

The board members of Jagd Schweiz were beside themselves with joy when, while digging through the soil, they came across the first yellowish stones the size of strawberries and believed them to be the promised Bitcoins. Just grind the stones down to coin size and prosperity would be unstoppable. After all, that's how it's done with rough diamonds, they figured.

As early as St. Nicholas Day, an envelope was sent to all hobby hunters in the inner circle of the association, containing a freshly polished coin and handy do-it-yourself mining instructions for the home cellar. Camaraderie and sharing are values truly lived by among the hunting fraternity. A Christmas gift that will not soon be forgotten!

At the same time, the cryptocurrency's exchange rate broke all records toward the end of 2017. It shot through the roof — practically in synchrony with the mining activities of the hobby hunters in their basement mines across Switzerland.

And so the mischief ran its course….

The Zurich police have now, following multiple tip-offs from the public, finally managed to apprehend miners who had been making themselves at home in the basements of dozens of private households along Zurich's Gold Coast after nightfall. Greed had gotten the better of them, and they had begun digging in other people's cellars.

DNA traces of Hanspeter Feuchtenbeiner (President of the Swiss Hunting Association) were found at a crime scene, which first put police on the trail of the gang.

During their raids, the hobby hunters, aged between 24 and 85, operated in a highly professional manner. They always waited for garbage collection times, when a particularly large number of empty bins were easily accessible near residential buildings, in order to quietly transport the uncut Bitcoins away at night while the owners were sleeping.

At the time of arrest, approximately 18.3 tonnes of the yellow-coloured rock were seized, which the perpetrators had deposited in an orange getaway vehicle. Geologists from the Zurich Criminal Investigation Department established, as was to be expected, that the stolen goods consisted of ordinary gravel and not, as the hobby hunters had mistakenly believed, uncut Bitcoins.

The entire board of Jagd Schweiz is, incidentally, still participating in the study involving the medication No-Hunt-Forte 7000 at the Clinica Ucello in the Engadin. Doctors have not yet reached a consensus on whether the hobby hunters' frenzied excavation activities can be attributed to possible side effects of the medication.

While the alleged ringleader of the Zurich Gold Coast crew — a serial offender and hare-whisperer from Pfannenstil — steered the stolen getaway vehicle, his accomplices rode on the outside running boards of the garbage truck in order to empty the bins containing the uncut Bitcoins into the interior of the truck as quickly as possible. In this way, entire streets could be stripped within a short space of time.

Authorities suspect that the gang represents only a small fraction of Switzerland-wide syndicates of hobby hunters who are still excavating in other people's basement floors. Police are receiving reports of stolen gravel from private basement floors from all across the country.

In addition to hunting down the masterminds on the board of Jagd Schweiz, who have since all been taken into investigative custody, the police also had their hands full with the confiscated stolen goods: the 60-strong special task force «Kies» is to carefully catalogue and sort the seized rubble over the coming weeks and then return it to its rightful owners, so that they can restore the holes and their basements.

The insurance companies of the hobby hunters are refusing to pay for the damage caused. Their position is: Stupidity is no defence against punishment. According to an initial estimate by the local civil engineering office, the damage in the canton of Zurich alone amounts to a figure in the double-digit millions.

The association Jagd Schweiz is now sitting on a mountain of debt. «Every centime counts now. All hunters must show solidarity and lend the association a helping hand in these difficult times» David Saueressig explained in tears to the reporter from IG Wild beim Wild, concluding his April pay campaign.

Donations are now also being accepted at the newly set up Bitcoin address «WE-LOVE-TO-KILL-DRVh5QnGkkZ» of the association Jagd Schweiz.