Hubertus Mass in Wil: The church must not sanctify hobby hunting

On Sunday, 22 November 2026, a Hubertus Mass will take place at 11.00 am in St. Niklaus Church in Wil (SG). According to the public announcement, the Schlaufuchs hunting horn ensemble will take part.

Christian faith and hobby hunting are diametrically opposed. The founding scene of Christianity is the manger: a child born between an ox and a donkey, surrounded by animals that are not prey but companions. Christianity begins with an image of peace between humans and animals, not with the hunting call. Anyone who stands in this tradition cannot make the pursuit, wounding and killing of sentient wild animals the subject of a religious service.

The IG Wild beim Wild criticises the fact that the church is making its premises and its service available for a hunting-themed spectacle. Hunting horn music, hunting associations and hunting rituals are not neutral decoration. They stand for a culture of pursuing, wounding and killing wild animals. When churches integrate these symbols into a religious service, hobby hunting is elevated both religiously and morally. This contradicts the Christian claim to mercy, non-violence and responsibility for creation.

Nor does the invocation of Saint Hubertus hold up. The historical Hubertus of Liège was an 8th-century bishop. The well-known story of the stag with a cross between its antlers was only attributed to him many centuries later and actually originates from the legend of Saint Eustace. In this narrative, a hunter is not affirmed in his actions: he abandons the hunt, throws away his weapon and changes his life. To use precisely this story of conversion as legitimation for a hunting-themed religious service turns its core meaning into its opposite.

Wild animals are not scenery or an infinitely renewable resource. They are sentient beings with social structures. Roe deer, red deer, foxes and many other species live in family groups, raise their young over months and maintain close bonds. Hobby hunting tears these groups apart. When a mother animal is shot, the young starve or are orphaned. Anyone who kills parent animals in autumn and winter is, in many cases, also killing the offspring — just more slowly and invisibly. No religious service can distance itself enough from a tradition that wipes out families.

Hunting is not harmless folklore. For wild animals, it means pursuit, mortal fear, injuries and death. And it often does not end with a clean shot. In Grisons, one of the few cantons that keeps records of follow-up searches, every tenth red deer is merely wounded rather than killed outright. The success rate of follow-up searches ranges between 35 and 65 percent, depending on the canton. This means that up to half of wounded animals die without release, often over hours or days. The Foundation for the Animal in Law estimates that 3,000 to 4,000 fleeing wild animals occur annually across Switzerland. These figures reveal what hunting horns and uniforms obscure.

Hobby hunting does not only kill animals. It regularly claims human lives too. On the weekend of 5 September 2026 alone, two hunters died while hunting in Ticino on the same day. Statistically speaking, a hunting accident occurs in Switzerland every 29 hours. The official count only began in the year 2000 and covers neither the deaths of the preceding decades nor the many cases involving legal hunting weapons that are classified as homicide or extended suicide rather than counted as “hunting accidents”. Across Europe, the number of victims runs into the hundreds. A leisure activity that costs the lives of both people and animals has no place being celebrated in church.

There is another way. The IG Wild beim Wild advocates for professional, scientifically grounded wildlife management modelled on the canton of Geneva. There, hobby hunting has been banned since 1974. Where intervention is necessary, trained state game wardens act in a targeted, controlled and professionally grounded manner — not simply because the hunting season happens to be open for a particular species and shooting for pleasure is permitted. This model shows that protecting people, wild animals and habitats requires professional expertise, not hobby hunting — and certainly not the church's blessing for it.

The IG Wild beim Wild calls on those responsible at the parish concerned to refrain from giving hobby hunting a religious endorsement. Churches should be places where compassion and the protection of vulnerable beings prevail, not places where violence against wild animals is aestheticised with hunting horns and religious symbolism.

Animals do not need the church's blessing for their persecution. They need protection.

The details regarding time, place and participants are taken from the public event announcement in the hunting press and were documented on 8 September 2026.

For more background on Swiss hobby hunting and its consequences for wild animals and people, see the category Hunting and the category Wild animals on wildbeimwild.com.