Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Fribourg

Legally problematic is the practice of authorizing shooting permits in federal hunting reserves: In the Hochmatt-Motélon reserve, twenty animals may exceptionally be killed during deer season. What is formulated as an exception repeats itself year after year. Those who make exceptions long enough create new normality. The category 'protected area' loses its meaning when it is regularly riddled with special permits.

Why recreational hunting fails as population control

Quotas, limits, control: bookkeeping instead of ecology

For chamois hunting in the Canton of Fribourg, a total of 223 animals were allocated for the 2025/26 season in mountain areas and the lowland colony of Petite Sarine, an increase from the previous year (214). For red deer, precise quotas apply according to sex and age: 35 stags, 35 yearling stags, 80 hinds or young hinds, 70 calves. This sounds like science. It is bookkeeping.

From an animal ethics perspective, quotas based on sex and age are particularly problematic: they reproduce the logic of a breeding operation, not that of a wildlife ecosystem. Anyone who prescribes how many females, how many calves, and how many bucks are to be shot is not managing a population, but reshaping it according to hunting preferences. The result is a wildlife population that corresponds to the wishes of recreational hunters, not the requirements of an intact habitat.

The cormorant as a symptom of species hierarchy

The 2025/26 hunting season brought a striking innovation in the Canton of Fribourg: The hunting period for cormorants was extended; they may now be hunted from September to the end of February, practically the entire winter half-year. Justification: The cormorant population is growing rapidly and creating a 'regulatory need' in the intercantonal perimeter.

Psychologically, the cormorant case illustrates the hunting species hierarchy. It is not protection status, scientific threat assessment, or ecological function that determines which animals may be hunted, but the question of whether an animal competes with hunting interests. The cormorant eats fish that hobby anglers want to catch. So it is declared a huntable species. Thus hunting administration continually constructs new 'regulatory needs' that are in reality conflicts of interest between hobby groups and wildlife.

Wolf opponents and the intercantonal petition

On March 9, 2023, a petition by wolf opponents was submitted to the State Chancellery of the Canton of Fribourg, which was simultaneously directed at the Canton of Vaud and demanded immediate measures for the elimination of wolves in the Broye region. The political reaction of the Fribourg authorities: resounding silence toward the hunting-critical camp and discreet openness toward the petitioners.

Psychologically, this petition is a textbook case in collective enemy cultivation. 'Immediate measures for elimination' are not wildlife rights demands; it is a behavioral directive to authorities to exterminate a protected predator. When a cantonal administration receives such demands without publicly contradicting them, it sends a signal: For wolf opponents, the doors are open. This undermines not only the legal protection of the wolf, but also the credibility of the entire wildlife protection system.

Wolf opponents suffer shipwreck
Wolf in Switzerland: Facts, politics and the limits of hunting

Bilingualism as a missed opportunity

Fribourg is the only canton that systematically communicates in two languages and thereby spreads hunting-political messages in a larger cultural space than monolingual cantons. This reach is not used to connect the different wildlife rights philosophies from the German- and French-speaking regions. Instead, administrative communication transports the same narrative in both languages: Regulation is necessary, recreational hunting is nature conservation, animals are populations.

French-speaking Switzerland knows hunting-critical positions from direct observation: Geneva has banned hunting and it works. Fribourg, as a bilingual canton, would have the opportunity to translate this experience to the German-speaking part of Switzerland and give political weight to hunting-critical arguments. Instead, one chooses the more comfortable role of the administering authority that sounds the same in both languages: sober, factual, and completely unassailable.

Summer permit wild boar: Recreational hunting without interruption

In the Canton of Fribourg, wild boar hunting in summer is permitted on specific weekdays (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday) in the lowlands and in the mountains outside forests during the month of July. Additionally, there are culls for regulation in protected areas with federal consent. De facto, there is no longer any real closed season for wild boar in the Canton of Fribourg.

Psychologically, this development is symptomatic of the creeping normalization of year-round hunting. What begins as an 'exception for damage situations' becomes standard practice, summer hunting becomes another quota, and the quota becomes an entitlement. The boundary between closed season and hunting season is shifted a little further each year until it exists only on paper.

Studies on the impact of recreational hunting on wildlife

Fribourg as a mirror of administered contradiction

The psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Fribourg is not a local anomaly, but a lens that magnifies the contradiction between protection promises and hunting practice. Protected areas that are annually riddled with exceptions, a cormorant that becomes a hunting target because it eats fish, and a wolf petition that is accepted without public rejection: This forms a picture of institutional double standards and political convenience.

Where science, animal ethics and democratic oversight were taken seriously, this system would have to be fundamentally questioned. The Canton of Fribourg, with its bilingualism and proximity to hunting-free Geneva, would have the best conditions to initiate an honest societal debate about recreational hunting. Instead, it chooses the language of administration and calls it wildlife management.

Initiative demands 'Game wardens instead of hobby hunters'
Switzerland hunts, but why actually?
Template texts for hunting-critical motions in cantonal parliaments

More on this in the dossier: Psychology of hunting

Cantonal psychology analyzes:

• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Glarus
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Zug
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Basel-Stadt
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Schaffhausen
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Neuchâtel
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Thurgau
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Nidwalden
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Uri
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Obwalden
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Schwyz
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Jura
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Basel-Landschaft
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Zurich
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Geneva
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Bern
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Solothurn
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Aargau
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Ticino
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Valais
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Graubünden
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of St. Gallen
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Fribourg
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Vaud
• Psychology of recreational hunting in the Canton of Lucerne