Podcast episode: hunting, lobby and wild animals

In this episode, Wild beim Wild examines the structures that shape the image of recreational hunting before a single shot is even fired.

The starting point is the «Landshut Dialogue» at the hunting museum in Utzenstorf, where on 19 July the admission of bow hunting in Switzerland will be discussed, with a bow-hunting speaker and a recreational hunter as moderator. The scientific basis against bow hunting is clear: in a study by the University of Oklahoma, half of the white-tailed deer that were shot at were only wounded and initially not found, and even the associations' embellished figures show a wounding rate of sixteen to seventeen percent.

This is matched by the account of a reporter who passed the recreational hunting examination without ever having been in the forest, as well as the event staging at the Susten Pass and Rouchgrat, where nature becomes a backdrop for shooting courses and gun fairs.

The second part reveals the ecological limits of recreational hunting. In Grisons, the Office for Hunting and Fisheries praises the recreational hunters for declining red deer populations and conceals the real factor: for decades the populations rose despite high hunts and special hunts, and only with the return of the predators wolf and lynx are they declining. Around 1,000 animals killed around 1950, over 5’000 around 2020, a peak of 6’515 in 2017.

A Neuchatel wolf study pursues a kill-free approach via scent marking and possible «scent barriers» for herd protection.

Counterexamples come from Spain: Doñana is drying out, the hunting lobby calls for more hunting, even though the wild boar population reached an all-time low in 2024, along with serious animal welfare violations at a slaughterhouse in Segovia.

The final section connects lobby, lead and cantonal reality tests. On 25 June 2026, the EU Commission's REACH committee approved a lead ban for hunting ammunition with a seven-year transition period instead of eighteen months; bullet ammunition is excluded entirely, coordinated by FACE and the ammunition industry. In Switzerland the deadline applies until the end of 2029, while lead shot outside wetlands remains unregulated.

The comparison between Zug and Lucerne shows how the same fox petition was handled: Zug commissioned a SWILD expert study and adopted three measures, whereas Lucerne voted 105 to 0 against fox protection. Add to that Trentino, which from 2027 intends to introduce bow hunting of wild boar populations it created itself, the federal hunters' day in Suhl with its questionable association advertising, as well as Wildtier Schweiz, which despite its closeness to JagdSchweiz maintains the federal statistics. As a counter-model stands the Geneva system, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974, with an immediate-death rate of 99.5 per cent and the highest brown hare densities in Switzerland.