Hunting Fever

Are there differences between hobby hunters and serial killers?

Both are sick (hunting fever) and have a strong desire for power and control. Hunting can be a first symptom of a dangerous psychopathy that is not limited to animals alone. Many studies confirm that acts of violence against animals demand our full attention!

Both the serial killer and the hobby hunter believe they are participating in something important.

Brain anomalies are found in serial killers with striking frequency. Violence leaves traces in the brain within a short period of time. Neuropsychologists confirm: The amygdala, a核 core region in the brain, is noticeably underdeveloped or impaired in violent offenders. If this central part of the brain is defective, the sense of disgust, among other things, is switched off.

When killing, both feel the same as when consuming drugs. A temporary relief, a sense of calm passes through their body and mind – until the hunting fever drives them to seek out a new victim once more. It cannot be denied that hunting also involves other illegal activities, such as poaching, arms smuggling, criminal behaviour, alcohol abuse, etc., and that it fosters sociopathy.

Relevant hunting magazines are full of pictures of hobby hunters in the grip of hunting fever, holding a weapon and posing in a dominant position over their victims. Such magazines stimulate the imagination of hobby hunters to want to hunt more and more, in all corners of the world. Hobby hunters need photographs and films of this kind in order to feel important.

Hunting weapons lead to abuse in our social lives due to hunting fever. Time and again, suicides involving firearms, threats, and deadly tragedies occur. Studies show that 90% of violent criminals began as animal abusers or hobby hunters. Year after year, countless people are killed and injured by hobby hunters and hunting weapons, in some cases so severely that they end up in wheelchairs or require limb amputations.

Areas where wildlife is heavily hunted can produce even larger populations. Hobby hunters do not merely kill sick or old animals — quite often they target the strongest and healthiest wildlife. A large number of animals are only wounded during hunting and not killed. Hunting destroys the natural balance of animal populations.

Animals play an equally important role as humans. They also show us how important it is to share, since we humans are not the only living beings on this planet.

IG Wild beim Wild

Hunting is the dark shadow that torments wildlife. Hunting is like prostitution. Territory hunters and licence holders pay a sum of money to indulge their passion and act out their urge to kill. Attractive hunts are organized for this purpose.

Except, for example, in the canton of Geneva

The canton of Geneva, which has been free of hobby hunters since 1974, does not have the wildlife problems that unprofessional hobby hunters create themselves. Wildlife there is managed by 12 professional environmental wardens (Gardes de l'environnement), which costs taxpayers less than a cup of coffee per year, according to Geneva's wildlife warden Gottlieb Dändliker. In the Netherlands, hunting was also largely abolished in 2002.

Hunting is ugly. Hunting is animal cruelty. Hunting pretends to be something it is not.

The fact that hunting in Switzerland is becoming ever more perverse is of no concern to hobby hunters. Recently, pregnant roe deer and female deer have been shot during special hunts, as have individual mothers and their young. Even the shooting of Bambi is praised in the highest terms. And all of this simply because the hunting planners have failed to sustainably regulate wildlife populations – because the self-inflicted problems of their poor science in wildlife management have long since gotten out of hand. How else can it be explained that, with allegedly ever-shrinking habitats, there are ever more deer, wild boar, etc., if not through the wrong practice of hunting as a whole?

There are few hobby hunters who understand that the population density of wildlife regulates itself dynamically based on food availability, territoriality, climate, disease, resources, and social and physiological factors, etc., without human intervention, if it is not disrupted by shooting. Hunting pressure, as well as other factors, increases the reproduction rates of the affected animal populations, which can be observed not only in wild boar, foxes, roe deer, red deer, and pigeons, but in every species (species preservation, survival instinct, compensatory reproduction, etc.). Most hobby hunters do not accept the predators that share their prey. They rear roe deer, red deer, and chamois much like domestic animals and then want to harvest as much as possible. They believe the wildlife belongs to them and that they have a right to prey and the killing of wildlife for fun. Native wildlife belongs to no one (res nullius). Hobby hunters have perfected the contempt for animals.

Hobby hunters have a great desire to do something heroic. To satisfy their self-esteem through the act of killing. Hobby hunters do not hesitate to exploit children at schools with missionary zeal. In a sectarian manner, with their hunters' jargon, they advertise their violent passion. Children and young people have a great love for animals, and yet hobby hunters place weapons and misdeeds in their hands.

Sick child of a hobby hunter with a dying wild animal:

What hobby hunters and serial killers also have in common is the desire to collect trophies from their victims. Both love to go on the hunt, to look out for victims, for the next violent act.

«I do not mean to suggest that most hunters are weak people, but in my experience, weak people often enough take the opportunity to compensate for their flaw by hunting or playing around with weapons and knives».

The Soul of the Killer» by FBI – Profiler John Douglas

Hobby hunters have been subjected to psychological and sociological studies in both Europe and the United States, and have been compared with non-hunters across various aspects. The results clearly show that hunters do not display a stronger connection to nature than non-hunters, tend to have a negative attitude toward animal welfare, environmental, and conservation issues, and generally exhibit a higher tendency toward aggressive behavior – a typical characteristic among meat eaters. The hunter's love of animals and nature does not find joy in the mere existence of the beloved object – rather, it aims to possess the beloved creature body and soul, culminating in turning it into prey through the act of killing. Nowhere is this more evident than in hunting narratives – found in virtually every issue of mainstream hunting magazines.

Even though people who hunt may have different character traits, all hobby hunters are ultimately united by the same activity: a violent treatment of peaceful animals and nature, often pursued merely for fun, leisure, in the grip of hunting fever, or as a sport, as well as the poisoning of nature with lead-based ammunition.

Upon close analysis, hobby hunters make no valuable contribution to flora and fauna. To this day, hobby hunters are responsible for a catastrophic imbalance in nature. With the high, artificially inflated populations of ungulates, they also endanger, for example, the protective forests in mountain regions.

Many Swiss hobby hunters participate in hunts abroad in the grip of hunting fever, and they certainly do not do so out of concern for flora and fauna. Hunting today is not an honorable craft, but a manifestation of cultural regression encompassing all the pointlessly practiced cruelties to animals. Hobby hunters and modern civilization are as compatible as fire and water, or a pedophilic kindergarten teacher in a kindergarten.

«A hunting license is a license to kill. That in common parlance someone who «holds a hunting license«, who is considered not entirely of sound mind, probably has – like most folk wisdom – a grain of truth. And indeed we do not know how many psychopaths, gun fanatics or addicts are among hunting licence holders, who are perfectly legally allowed to handle firearms. Nor do we know who among hunting licence applicants wants solely to pass the hunter's examination in order to obtain legal access to firearms. We do not know, the authorities do not know, the hunting associations do not know – and would rather not know».

Karin Hutter

Christian Lüdke is a psychotherapist who trains special police units and focuses primarily on the psychology of perpetrators.

Lüdke: “Such people lead a double life. On the inside they feel like absolute failures – in their family life, professionally and sexually – and are driven by extreme desires for power. Because they cannot act on this in everyday life, they must do so through an act of violence, and they seek out the most vulnerable victims.”

How can one recognize such a person?

Lüdke: “Outwardly they are mostly very inconspicuous. But in the life histories of these perpetrators, three symptoms frequently appear around the age of eleven: that they wet the bed again, that they play with fire, and above all, that they torture animals.”

Are these isolated cases?

Lüdke: “Unfortunately not. There are a great many people among us who possess such a high level of sexual, criminal energy that they are essentially ticking time bombs.”

What is the right path? It is the path on which thought is given to how the killing of living beings can be prevented.

More on this in the dossier: Psychology of Hunting