Thousands of hunting offences, barely any animal cruelty convictions: what two sets of statistics show

A recreational hunter hits a red deer hind with shot, she lies wounded in the forest for two days, and the penalty is a 300-franc fine and a suspended monetary penalty. The Solothurn case is one of the few hunting cases that result in a conviction for animal cruelty. Just how few there are is shown by two sets of statistics: the Grisons hunting fines and the animal welfare criminal rulings for the whole of Switzerland.

Over a thousand fines and complaints a year, in Grisons alone

From 2012 to 2020, the Grisons Office for Hunting and Fishing registered more than a thousand fixed penalty fines and complaints against recreational hunters every year, averaging just under 1,200. Most of these were for mistaken kills. We documented the full series in the article Flims, Klosters, Sedrun. Since 2021, the office has no longer published the figure. The 2021 annual report says only that fines and complaints remained "within the usual range". According to the report, 5,634 people hunted in that same year.

A sample calculation for the whole of Switzerland

We are not aware of a comparable series from other cantons. If the Grisons figures are applied arithmetically to Switzerland, the picture is as follows: for roughly 5,600 active recreational hunters, Grisons recorded on average just under 1,200 fines and complaints a year, a little more than one case for every five people. With the roughly 30,000 hunters recorded in the Swiss Federal Hunting Statistics for 2023 (Keystone-SDA), that would amount to around 6,500 cases a year.

This is not an estimate of the hunting offences actually registered or committed. The calculation assumes that regulations, forms of hunting and checks are comparable everywhere, and they are not. The figures also describe incidents, not individuals: several fines can concern the same recreational hunter. They do show, however, the order of magnitude of rule violations when checks are as dense as in the Grisons hunt.

Hunting law and animal welfare law

The Grisons fines are issued under hunting law. Not every wrongly shot animal amounts to cruelty to animals: anyone who kills an animal of the wrong sex or age is breaching hunting regulations. In its 2021 annual report, the authority states that wrongful kills are "as a rule not animal welfare cases".

Wounded animals are a different matter. In 2021, according to the same annual report, the Grisons tracking-dog handlers were called out for 1,018 follow-up searches, 57 per cent of which were successful. Whether an animal that fled wounded is prosecuted as animal cruelty is decided under the Animal Welfare Act. The cantons must report all criminal decisions under this act to the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO). The Swiss Animal Law Foundation (TIR) records them in a public database.

What the animal welfare database contains

We evaluated all decisions from this database for the years 2018 to 2022. The basis was two queries: 361 decisions from the case group "Animal welfare offences in connection with hunting and fishing" and 115 further decisions involving breaches of the hunting act or hunting ordinance that do not fall into this group. We read each set of facts individually. Fishing, wildlife collisions, hunting by stray dogs and shots fired without hunting authorisation were excluded; where cases went through several instances, the final decision counts. The most recent hit in both queries dates from 30 December 2022.

This leaves 17 convictions for the whole of Switzerland, and in three further cases the proceedings were discontinued. Two come from the Grisons. For the years 2018 to 2020, in which the canton registered 3,459 fines and reports, the database contains a single Grisons hunting case: a roe doe that was shot and wounded and killed with a knife hours later.

Eight of the 17 cases involve wounded animals that were either followed up too late or not at all. Six are cases of mistaken identity, because the animal had not been correctly identified before the shot. Twice an injured animal was killed with a knife. In one case, a wounded fox was chased with a dog and dragged to the car by its tail.

Case	Canton	Facts of the case	Fine (CHF)	Licence withdrawn in ruling
BE18/066	BE	Roe deer wounded, no follow-up search	700	not stated
BE18/283	BE	Fox wounded, chased with dog, killed after delay	200	not stated
GL18/007	GL	Follow-up search for male chamois postponed to the next day	1’500	not stated
SG18/052	SG	Dog shot instead of fox	500	not stated
SH18/005	SH	Wild boar wounded, no follow-up search	1’300	not stated
SZ18/020	SZ	Red deer hind shot in the jaw, inadequate follow-up search	1’270	not stated
TG18/005	TG	Four sheep shot instead of wild boars	450	not stated
BE20/025	BE	Male chamois shot at 190 metres, insufficient follow-up search	1’080	not stated
BE20/252	BE	Injured roe deer from a road accident killed with a pocket knife	1’500	not stated
BE21/103	BE	Wild boar wounded, follow-up search without waiting period	650	not stated
GR21/060	GR	Roe doe wounded, killed with a knife hours later	800	2 years, suspended
NW21/009	NW	Chamois wounded beyond permitted distance, report delayed	1’700	not stated
SG22/158	SG	Lactating roe doe killed as a yearling doe	3’300	1 year
SG22/201	SG	Lactating roe doe killed as a yearling doe	3’300	1 year
SZ22/019	SZ	Roe doe wounded, shooter leaves the scene	5’250	not stated
BE22/050	BE	Roe deer shot instead of fox in a wildlife reserve	2’100	3 years
GR22/011	GR	Cow shot during the hunt	1’300	not stated

The penalties

All 17 convicted persons received a monetary penalty, and all 17 monetary penalties were suspended. In addition, fines of between CHF 200 and CHF 5,250 were imposed, with a median of CHF 1,300. There were no custodial sentences. In three rulings the hunting entitlement was withdrawn; in the Grisons knife case the withdrawal was suspended. We did not evaluate separate administrative proceedings concerning hunting entitlements.

For comparison, from the same database: a fish farmer in Nidwalden who shot a protected grey heron (NW22/004) received an unsuspended monetary penalty and a CHF 4,000 fine. A man in Zurich in whose leghold trap a vixen was seriously injured (ZH22/086) was sentenced to a suspended custodial sentence of 180 days.

What the comparison leaves open

The two statistics measure different things. The Grisons series counts fixed penalty fines and reports under hunting law, while the TIR database records criminal rulings under the Animal Welfare Act that were reported to the FSVO. A report is also not yet a conviction. No prosecution rate can therefore be calculated from the comparison.

It remains unclear how many incidents during hunts gave rise to a suspicion of animal cruelty, whether the authorities examined each of these under the Animal Welfare Act, and whether the cantons reported all corresponding rulings to the FSVO. Cases punished solely under hunting law do not appear in the database in any event. This applies, for example, to the Toggenburg recreational hunter, who in 2026 mistook a red deer for a roe buck and was fined for negligent violation of the Hunting Act.

What the 17 convictions show is the sanctioning practice in the documented cases: without exception suspended monetary penalties and fines, with a median of 1,300 francs.

Commentary: An enforcement apparatus for a hobby

A hobby that, in a single canton alone, generates over a thousand fines and reports a year for years on end requires game wardens, inspections, fine schedules and tracking-dog handlers, who carried out over a thousand follow-up searches in 2021. Instead of drawing consequences from this, the Grisons SVP even demanded lower penalties for mistaken kills, which the government rejected. And where an animal actually suffers, the few animal welfare proceedings that are publicly documented end in suspended monetary penalties.

Anyone who takes animal cruelty in recreational hunting seriously must prosecute wounded animals left without a proper follow-up search under the Animal Welfare Act, withdraw the hunting entitlement upon every conviction, and have the cantonal reports to the FSVO reviewed. Grisons should resume publishing its fines statistics, and the other cantons should start doing so.

The canton of Geneva has shown since 1974 that wildlife management can do without thousands of armed recreational hunters who have to be monitored, fined and reported. There, regulation lies with professional, state-employed game wardens. The Grisons figures are therefore not an argument for more control of recreational hunting, but for replacing it with the Geneva model. Further cases are documented in the section Crime & hunting.

Sources

Hunting and Fisheries Office of the Canton of Grisons, annual reports 2012 to 2021. Stiftung für das Tier im Recht, animal welfare criminal case database, accessed 12 October 2026; for convictions see table, for discontinued proceedings BE21/268, GL18/006, SG22/185, comparison cases NW22/004 and ZH22/086. Federal hunting statistics 2023 via Keystone-SDA.