Italy: fewer than 430’000 active hobby hunters – new research corrects widely circulated figures

The Italian animal welfare organisation Lega Abolizione Caccia (LAC) published research on the number of hunting licences issued in Italy on 6 September 2026.

According to this research, only 429,484 hunting licences (“tesserini venatori”) were issued nationwide to people resident in Italy for the 2025/26 hunting season.

Relative to the 53,383,000 Italian citizens resident in Italy as of 1 January 2026 (excluding the 5.56 million registered foreign nationals), this corresponds to 0.8 percent of the population. The analysis also shows a further decline compared with the previous season, painting a markedly different picture than the frequently cited figures based on firearms licences or estimates from universities, ministries, associations and the hunting industry.

Official hunting licences instead of firearms licences

The research was curated by Augusto Atturo, an environmental representative on the hunting and wildlife commission of the Liguria region. Atturo invoked the right of access to administrative data under Article 5 of the Italian legislative decree 33/2013.

He requested the number of hunting licences actually issued for the last two hunting seasons from the responsible authorities in all 19 regions as well as the autonomous provinces of Bolzano and Trento. Only people resident in the respective region were counted, in order to avoid double counting, for example when someone holds hunting licences from two regions for practical reasons. For Bolzano and Trento, the local “permessi” for residents were used.

The method differs significantly from statistics on firearms licences for hunting purposes, as issued by the Questure, the Italian police authorities. Such licences do not necessarily indicate whether a person takes out a seasonal hunting licence in a given season or actually practises hunting. In addition, the figures on firearms licences are often published only after considerable delay.

According to LAC, four regions or provinces, Lazio, Calabria, Campania and Bolzano, initially exceeded the statutory response period of 30 days. Atturo therefore had to follow up via the responsible transparency officers, the so-called RPCT.

Decline of 2.7 percent

In the 2024/25 season, 441,261 hunting licences were recorded as issued to people resident in Italy. A year later, the number fell to 429,484. This corresponds to a decline of around 2.7 percent.

The largest absolute declines were recorded in Tuscany with 3,227, Lombardy with 2,276 and Latium with 1,743 fewer issued hunting licences. Small increases occurred, among other places, in Sicily, Calabria and the autonomous provinces of Bolzano and Trento.

An international pattern: Italy, the Iberian Peninsula and the USA

The decline of hobby hunting is not an isolated Italian phenomenon. A scientific study on the demographic development of hobby hunting on the Iberian Peninsula, using data from six Spanish regions and Portugal, concludes that the ageing of the hobby hunting population is pronounced, persistent and likely almost irreversible. In the area studied, the number of hobby hunters fell by 26 percent over the past 15 years, and by 45 percent over a period of 50 years.

Around 40 percent of the hobby hunters examined are now over 60 years old. The number of newcomers fell by 89 percent over 50 years. For the Aragón region, the study also documents a decline in hunting licences from around 54,000 to fewer than 46,000 within 15 years.

A long-term relative decline is also evident in the USA. In 1960, around 14.0 million hunting licences were sold there, corresponding to 7.7 percent of the population at the time. In 2020, the figure was around 15.2 million licences; due to much stronger population growth, this corresponded to only 4.6 percent of the population. While the number of hunting licences sold increased by 8.6 percent since 1960, the population grew by 83.4 percent over the same period. A separate survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on actual hunting participation shows a similar finding: it fell from 8.9 percent of the population in 1960 to 4.5 percent in 2016, the lowest figure to date in the survey series running since 1955.

Italy, the regions studied in Spain and Portugal, and the USA thus display a comparable long-term pattern: hobby hunting is losing weight relative to the overall population and is struggling to attract younger generations. In direct comparisons between countries, however, it remains crucial that hunting licences, hunting permits and surveys on actual hunting participation measure different things. The article explains why the trend in Germany appears different in individual statistics Why hobby hunting is losing its next generation, except in Germany.

Also relevant for Switzerland

In Switzerland, too, hunter numbers have been changing regionally for years, while the social and political legitimacy of hobby hunting is increasingly being called into question. The international data situation makes clear why hunting statistics must be examined closely: weapon licences, association figures and actually issued hunting licences do not measure the same thing. Anyone wanting to know how many people obtain a hunting licence in a season, thereby being legally entitled to hobby hunt, gets a far more meaningful basis from the number of issued hunting licences than from mere weapon licence or association figures.

Further background is available in the dossier on studies about the effects of hunting on wild animals and humans.

Why enjoying killing is not a harmless hobby motive

From a psychological perspective, people who take pleasure in killing living creatures and pay to do so are not displaying normal leisure behaviour. This behaviour contradicts the fundamental mechanisms of empathy, compassion and moral inhibition present in the majority of psychologically healthy people. Psychologically speaking, this constitutes deviant violent behaviour, even if it is politically or culturally tolerated.

Enjoyment of killing is a classic feature of pleasure-based violence. The act of violence itself is rewarding: not the outcome, not some claimed necessity, but the killing itself. This is not a marginal phenomenon — it is clearly described in the psychology of violence.

Not everyone who hunts will experience the act of killing in the same way, or openly describe it as enjoyment. But anyone who experiences hobby hunting precisely as the pleasure of the kill, as adrenaline, triumph or personal gratification, displays a psychologically problematic motivation for violence. Historically and structurally, this is closely related to authoritarian and dehumanising ways of thinking, because it turns the killed creature into a means of one's own gratification.