Dangers of Recreational Hunting: Seasonal Threat to Wildlife
Even in winter, recreational hunters cause havoc. They disturb wildlife during their rest period and hunt foxes without a culling plan.
Winter Rest Disturbed by Recreational Hunters
Even during the cold season, when one should leave wildlife in peace in their habitat, recreational hunters cause havoc.
As in January and December, the self-proclaimed predator also disturbs all wildlife in forests and fields in February, for example through the pathological hunting of healthy foxes.
Not every recreational hunter is trigger-happy, but every recreational hunter is a killer. No one has a mandate to kill. It is their choice to kill and their choice to “nurture and care for” what they later kill. Recreational hunting is often referred to as a passion, but it is always based on a dubious disposition.
Recreational Hunter Shoots Himself in Austria
In doing so, they sometimes shoot themselves in the head, as recently happened in Austria.
Investigators reconstructed that the 56-year-old recreational hunter, likely while descending or ascending, with the rifle presumably unsecured, accidentally placed his finger on the trigger. A shot was subsequently discharged from the weapon into his head. The victim, a lawyer with a practice in St. Pölten, died instantly on 6 February 2024.
Fatal hunting accidents in France
Almost simultaneously, in Verrières (Orne) in France, a recreational hunter shot another in the stomach. The 42-year-old victim died from these injuries.
In this case too, human error is the cause. Recreational hunters are normally required to fire a “warning shot” directed at the ground and must respect the hunting rules, which state that “not shooting is an act of hunting” when not all conditions are met.
At the end of December 2023, another recreational hunter lost his life in France. During the recreational hunt, this 44-year-old man was struck in the neck by his friend. This investigation is also still ongoing.
In mid-January, a 72-year-old recreational hunter had been shot dead by a 57-year-old hunting companion during a group hunt in Lorraine (eastern France).
Further articles
More recent hunting accidents and documented criminal offences involving recreational hunters can be found here: Chronicle of hunting accidents and criminal offences at Abschaffung der Jagd as well as in the Chronicle of hunting accidents in Germany, Austria and Switzerland at PETA.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland we document cases, legal questions and recurring patterns. 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.
