Sect: The Recreational Hunters
A healthy democracy should not tolerate recreational hunters triumphing over animal welfare laws, the law and science for the sake of gratifying their own pleasure.
The word cult (from the Latin secta 'party', 'teaching', 'school of thought') is defined, among other things, as follows: a small community such as recreational hunters, often with a hierarchical structure, whose views are usually very radical and aberrant and contradict the fundamental ethical values of society.
The latter is evident, for example, in the recreational hunters' notion of ‘sportsmanship’, which diametrically contradicts animal welfare laws in many countries, or in the banned depictions of violence against tormented wild animals in the media. The fundamental ethical values of our society also forbid animals being tormented or shot or offered up for this purpose.
The Swiss Criminal Code states the following about depictions of violence in Art. 135 (similarly in Germany):
…, anyone who displays or presents objects or performances under paragraph 1, insofar as they depict acts of violence against humans or animals, shall be punished with a custodial sentence of up to one year or a monetary penalty …
Characteristics of an aggressive cult
Cross-border commonalities of the “recreational hunter” cult include: hunters' tall tales, death rituals, martial music-making, glorification of violence, hatred of competitors, ideological brainwashing, garbage biology, deviant ideology, militant media propaganda, clothing, anachronistic notions of nature, and so on.
Recreational hunters fall into the category of aggressive cults, with a missionary drive targeting children in schools as well as in politics, and a pronounced militant sense of elitism. According to media reports, mafia-like structures, corruption and crime go hand in hand with the recreational hunters' shooting culture in many places. Well-known propaganda material from the recreational hunting community is full of images and accounts of their trophy and weapons cult, which actually only disgusts around +/- 99% of the ordinary population.
Saint Hubertus (Eustace) serves as a fig leaf and patron saint for the evil craft of hunting. Recreational hunters, however, deliberately refuse to follow Hubertus' noble teachings.
Diffuse hunting doctrines worldwide
Diffuse hunting doctrines can be found every few degrees of latitude and longitude on the map. In the far north, recreational hunters beam with broad smiles, claiming that kill traps are 'sportsmanlike'. Foreign recreational hunters disapprove of shooting young animals or mothers, while Swiss hunting authorities sing the highest praises and have even developed special reward systems for recreational hunters. Recreational hunters romanticise hunting ideologies as wildlife biology. Fox hunting is frowned upon in some areas, while in many regions it is carried out fanatically, almost obsessively, because the fox is seen as a hunting rival — even though the biology of a fox in Geneva is not significantly different from that of one in Greece. But indeed, where a hunting ban would actually cause no population problems at all, recreational hunters create some anyway — guaranteed! The same applies to winter feeding or closed seasons, which can look completely different on one riverbank than on the other. Recreational hunters do whatever they please. Southern European recreational hunters shoot down the protected birds of Northern Europeans as they fly to their summer or winter grounds. Even when it comes to tools of the trade — weapons such as rifles, crossbows, arrows and bows, and ammunition — these wild boar whisperers cannot agree. In the canton of Obwalden, for example, high seats are a banned aid, and so on.
In Germany, it is not considered 'sportsmanlike' to shoot roe deer with buckshot, unlike in Switzerland or Sweden. Any recreational hunter can be a cult leader — and, as the head of a hunting ground, indeed is one. The main thing is that it be militant, unscientific and pointless. This runs like a common thread through the followers of hunting associations. Who today knows of a recreational hunter who has nursed a sick wild animal back to health? As a rule, wild animals are shot and wounded by recreational hunters and die miserably in agony, staring into the grimacing face of a recreational hunter.
Recreational hunting regulates nothing
Recreational hunting does not regulate wildlife populations according to their natural abundance, but instead creates inflated or suppressed populations. These unnatural problems and population surpluses are largely home-made by recreational hunters themselves, so that the recreational hunting community can claim for itself a supposedly legal mandate. Recreational hunting has long ceased to have anything to do with honourable wildlife management and has simply degenerated into an ever more brutal slaughter of wild animals, beyond all ethics. Organising attractive hunts is the whole point. In relevant circles, this is deceptively referred to as “habitat-adapted wildlife populations”, “fine-tuned regulation”, “two-tier system”, “dynamic management”, “development aid”, “harvesting”, “skimming”, or similar animal-contemptuous propaganda.
Recreational hunting is not about comprehensive biodiversity or the protection of individual wild animals, but about money. In many places, the militant recreational hunter cult is granted access in order to create problems that would otherwise not even exist.
People and wild animals deserve scientific wildlife management, not sectarian recreational hunting.
What today's recreational hunter considers “good” has nothing to do with truth, science, honour, decency, ethics, consideration for others or anything else, except what the recreational hunter wants for himself. In this way, the recreational hunter commits every violation of others' rights, every foul, every evil deed.
In other words, when a recreational hunter is confronted with something unpleasant or threatening, the object in question (person, animal, idea, group, whatever it may be) is placed into the “absolutely evil” category — because if the recreational hunter cannot stand it, it simply cannot be good!
The recreational hunter, briefly described: they can feign anything just to get what they want. Recreational hunters lack conscience and empathy by definition. Here is an example: a recreational hunting family has two sons. One commits suicide with a hunting rifle. At the following Christmas, the parents give the exact same weapon to their other son. When asked why, they say: “The weapon works perfectly fine!”
Animal welfare advocates have long regulated wildlife populations ethically, on a scientifically sound and sustainably correct basis, and do not decimate them like militant cult followers. Wherever no recreational hunters are active in nature, there is a richer biodiversity. Areas where wild animals are heavily hunted produce an even greater surplus or shortage. The size of wildlife populations and the damage caused by browsing are not necessarily greater in hunting-free areas than in areas where hunting takes place.
When recreational hunters supposedly really engage in nature conservation, they do so independently of their hunting activities. Recreational hunters protect roe deer fawns from being killed by mowing machines in spring, so that they can shoot them in the back come autumn.
How imperfect and impoverished must a cultivated landscape be, that recreational hunters need to chase, torment and kill living creatures for fun? Anyone who still believes today that wildlife populations can only be adjusted through recreational hunting is either poorly informed or profits from it.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Psychology of recreational hunting we put research, motives and social consequences into perspective. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
All articles are written by IG Wild beim Wild as well as by external co-authors. Research, structuring and editorial processes may be supported by AI-assisted tools.
Support our work
With your donation you help protect animals and give their voice a hearing.
Donate now →
