84-year-old recreational hunter fatally killed in the Leventina Valley
An 84-year-old recreational hunter was found dead on Wednesday morning in the Ticino Leventina Valley. The man from the Lugano region had been reported missing the previous evening.
According to the Ticino cantonal police, the recreational hunter was discovered on 17.9.2025 shortly before 10:30 a.m. above Personico at an altitude of approximately 1,400 metres. Based on initial findings, he fell several metres for reasons that have yet to be clarified and succumbed to his severe injuries.
In addition to the cantonal police, Rega and the search and rescue service SAS were also involved in the search operation.
The exact circumstances of the accident are currently under investigation.
In the context of this incident, calls are once again being made for stricter controls and age limits for hunting licences.
The hunting-critical organisation IG Wild beim Wild points to accident statistics involving older recreational hunters and calls for annual medical-psychological assessments based on foreign models.
In Switzerland, every year more people are injured and killed by the risk group of recreational hunters than by Islamic terrorists, cults, the mafia, wolves and biker gangs combined.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on the criticism of recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. 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.
