Hubertusschiessen in Wassen: the saint is unfit to serve as a patron of marksmen

On Saturday, 24 October 2026, a Hubertusschiessen (St Hubert shoot) will take place in Wassen (UR). According to the public announcement, shooting will run from 10 a.m. to 12 noon and from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.: five shots at an animal target and ten shots at a tipping hare. Young hunters and recreational hunters, including those from other cantons, may take part. The prize-giving will be held in the Jägerstübli.

Invoking Saint Hubert does not hold up either. The historical Hubert of Liège was a bishop in the 8th century. The well-known story of the stag with a cross in its antlers was attributed to him only many centuries later and goes back to the legend of Saint Eustace. In that tale, a hunter is not confirmed in what he does: he breaks off the hunt, throws away his weapon and changes his life. That his very name should be used for a shooting competition on animal dummies turns the legend into its opposite. The saint is unfit to serve as a patron of marksmen.

Animal targets and tipping hares are not harmless sports equipment. What is being practised is the shot at wild animals which will afterwards actually be killed in the canton's forests and mountains. The Hubertusschiessen is therefore not a tradition but training for recreational hunting under the cloak of a saint.

Wild animals are not a backdrop, nor an endlessly 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. Recreational hunting tears these groups apart. When a mother is shot, her young starve or are orphaned. Anyone who kills parent animals in autumn and winter in many cases also kills their offspring, only more slowly and out of sight.

Recreational hunting is not harmless folklore. For wild animals it means pursuit, mortal fear, injury and death. And it often does not end with a clean shot. In Grisons, one of the few cantons that keep 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.

Recreational hunting does not only kill animals. It regularly claims human lives too. On the weekend of 5 September 2026 alone, two recreational hunters during a hunt 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 records neither the deaths of the preceding decades nor the many cases which, as homicides or extended suicides committed with a legal hunting weapon, are not counted as 'hunting accidents' at all. Across Europe, the number of victims runs into the hundreds. A leisure pursuit that costs the lives of people and animals does not need a saint as its figurehead.

There is another way. IG Wild beim Wild advocates professional, science-based wildlife management modelled on the the canton of Geneva. There, recreational hunting has been banned since 1974. Where intervention is necessary, trained state game wardens act in a targeted, controlled manner on a professional basis, not because the hunting season has just opened for a particular species and shooting for pleasure is permitted. This model shows that protecting people, wild animals and habitats requires professional expertise, not leisure hunting and certainly not a saint as patron.

IG Wild beim Wild calls for an end to adorning recreational hunting with religious symbolism. Anyone who wants to protect wild animals needs no ceremonial targets, but professional wildlife management.

Animals do not need a patron saint for their pursuers. They need protection.

The details on time, place and programme are taken from the public event announcement in the hunting press and were documented on 19 October 2026.

For the Hubertus masses, IG Wild beim Wild has released the song 'Warum jagst du mich' ('Why do you hunt me'). It is about recreational hunters who seek the church's blessing, weapons and all, and reminds us that, according to the legend, Hubertus gave up hunting. Like all Anti-Hunting Songs it is free to use.

You will find more background on recreational hunting in Switzerland and its consequences for wild animals and people in the dossier Recreational hunting as an event, in the category Hunting and the category Wild animals on wildbeimwild.com.