Hubertus celebration in Hinterkappelen: the church must not sanctify recreational hunting

On Friday, 20 November 2026, at 6.30 pm, a Hubertus celebration will take place at the Bergfeld hunting shooting range in Hinterkappelen (BE). According to the public announcement, the Jagdschützen Bern, supported by the Jagd- und Wildschutzverein Hubertus Bern, are inviting people to a celebration featuring a sermon by a pastor. Musical accompaniment will be provided by the hunting horn group of Hubertus Bern.

The venue speaks for itself: the sermon will be delivered at a facility where people practise shooting at animals. When a pastor appears there in the name of faith, the killing of wild animals is given a spiritual veneer.

Christian faith and recreational hunting are diametrically opposed. The founding scene of Christianity is the manger: a child born between ox and donkey, surrounded by animals that are not prey but companions. Christianity begins with an image of peace between humans and animals, not with the Halali. Anyone standing in this tradition cannot accompany the pursuit, wounding and killing of sentient wild animals with a sermon.

IG Wild beim Wild criticises the fact that a pastor is lending his sermon to a hunting folklore festival. Hunting horn music, hunting clubs and hunting rituals are not neutral decoration. They stand for a culture of pursuing, wounding and killing wild animals. When the Church accompanies these rituals, recreational hunting is given religious and moral legitimacy. This contradicts the Christian ideals of mercy, non-violence and responsibility for creation.

Invoking Saint Hubertus does not hold up either. The historical Hubertus of Liège was an 8th-century bishop. The well-known story of the stag with the cross between 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 his actions: he abandons the hunt, throws away his weapon and changes his life. To celebrate this story of conversion at a hunting shooting range, of all places, turns its very essence on its head.

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 it covers neither the deaths of the preceding decades nor the many cases that are not counted as a 'hunting accident' at all because they are classed as homicide or extended suicide involving a legally held hunting weapon. Across Europe, the number of victims runs into the hundreds. A leisure pastime that costs the lives of people and animals does not need spiritual blessing.

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 way 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 expertise, not leisure hunting, and certainly not a church blessing for it.

IG Wild beim Wild calls on the responsible parish to refrain from lending recreational hunting the added dignity of church endorsement. Pastoral care should stand for compassion and the protection of vulnerable living beings, not for the glorification of violence against wild animals.

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

The details of time, place and participants come 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.