Shooting ranges for recreational hunters: Thurgau builds, even though Bülach would have had room

On 3 November, the canton, the cantonal police and Jagd Thurgau held an information event in Müllheim on the planned Heckemos shooting training centre. According to the Thurgauer Zeitung, the shooters' clubhouse was packed to the last seat, and many local residents voiced criticism. The project costs CHF 10.1 million and is due to open at the earliest at the end of 2029. What such facilities cost after opening can be seen some 40 kilometres away as the crow flies, in Bülach.

From 6.5 to 10.1 million

In Thurgau, Jagd Thurgau has operated the canton's only hunting shooting range in Weinfelden since 1933. Because it breaches environmental regulations, the canton wants to build a new one. In the partial revision of the hunting act, the government was still expecting a one-off expenditure of around CHF 6.5 million including land purchase. The partial revision established that the canton builds and operates the facility.

The Grand Council rejected the first project credit of CHF 9.06 million. The government reworked the project and combined it with the shooting training of the cantonal police. The new project credit stands at CHF 10.121 million. This time it passed: according to Thurgauer Zeitung, the Grand Council rejected the motion to strike it by 113 votes to 8. In effect, the police served as a door-opener for a project that had previously failed as a facility purely for recreational hunters. According to the Thurgauer Zeitung, night shooting is also planned.

The alternative was on the table

What was already known before the second attempt is noteworthy. SVP cantonal councillors Kurt Baumann and Hans Eschenmoser pointed in a parliamentary initiative a report by the Thurgau hunting and fisheries administration to the Grand Council. According to that report, the Zurich facility Widstud, by its operating company's own account, could easily have accommodated the roughly 700 Thurgau recreational hunters.

A modern facility in the neighbouring canton was thus an obvious option for taking over the shooting training of recreational hunters. Thurgau is building its own anyway.

Bülach: Operation promised at no cost to the canton

How things have gone for Widstud was already reported by Wild beim Wild in May 2025: The new shooting range for recreational hunters was on the brink of bankruptcy. Official documents show how far the canton of Zurich has moved away from its own commitments in the process.

In 2014, the Building Department announced in its press release on the design plan that private parties would build and operate the facility so that the canton would incur no operating costs. It was built by the general contractor Allreal for around 28 million francs and leased to the operating company. As early as 2021, the cantonal financial control office criticised, according to a report by the Finance Committee, that no service agreement existed between the operating company and the canton.

After the opening in 2023, the shooters stayed away. By resolution of 19 March 2025 the Executive Council approved up to 3.5 million francs for 350,000 new shares. This is intended to enable the operating company to buy the facility from Allreal, and the canton will send its own representative to the board of directors. According to nau.ch, the canton thereby becomes the largest shareholder without a voting majority, while private investors are favoured when it comes to dividends. The 2025 annual report of the Building Department records the share purchase.

Then there is the legacy of the old facility: The remediation of the Embrach hunting shooting range in the Töss floodplains cost around 19 million francs, and some 320 tonnes of lead were removed from the soil.

Shot, noise and light

The operation, too, is a subject of debate. In April 2026, the Green cantonal councillors David Galeuchet and Wilma Willi criticised in a question to the Executive Council that, according to the Tages-Anzeiger, shot repeatedly lands outside the facility, even though the operator had been asked several times to make improvements. The operator admitted that it had not yet fully met the requirement to contain the shot. The planned raising of the palisades had been staked out in April, but the permit was still pending, according to the operator.

The two members of the cantonal parliament also criticised the noise from shooting, night-time lighting in an otherwise dark landscape and additional traffic next to an amphibian protection area. Volunteers carried amphibians across the access road. The noise has been disputed since the planning stage and has already occupied the Federal Supreme Court. The operator points out that the cantonal building department confirmed in December 2023 that the planning values were being met. Galeuchet and Willi also wanted to know how the operator stands financially.

For residents of Müllheim and Wigoltingen, it is worth looking at Bülach.

The myth of free militia hunting

In the case of the Zurich initiative 'Wildlife Wardens Instead of Hunters' the cantonal government warned of costs of 20 to 30 million francs for professional wildlife wardens and praised the supposedly voluntary services of recreational hunters. Wild beim Wild took the opposite view at the time in its fact check on the Zurich cantonal government: the hunting administration has been running at a loss for years, the renovation of the hunting shooting ranges will cost tens of millions, and there can be no talk of voluntary work when recreational hunters lease hunting grounds cheaply and generate income from game meat, trophies and invoices for wildlife accidents.

Embrach and the Widstud have confirmed this assessment. The public sector is financing the renovation of the old facility and, as the largest shareholder in the new one, bears a large part of the entrepreneurial risk. The picture of a militia hunting system that costs the public nothing does not stand up to scrutiny.

Context

Accuracy is a duty of those who take up a weapon. The costs of it belong to their hobby. Instead, the public sector steps in: Zurich is propping up a public limited company whose customers failed to materialise. Thurgau is building a centre for police and recreational hunters for 10.1 million francs, even though the Widstud says it could have taken in the Thurgau recreational hunters. By comparison, the hunting shooting range alone was budgeted at 9.06 million francs in the first attempt. Fribourg is even opening up the fauna fund for shooting ranges.

The costs of recreational hunting are spread across many bills: hunting administration, shooting ranges, contaminated sites. Wild beim Wild has compiled the items in the dossier What recreational hunting really costs Switzerland. The shooting ranges in Bülach and Müllheim belong in this calculation.