Sweden: Hobby Hunting of Predators Escalates to Violence

On social media, hobby hunters show who takes pleasure in killing.

Photos and films by hobby hunters depict what would be considered serious violence if it involved your dog or your cat. Licensed hobby hunting in Sweden has created an unethical trade in protected predators. The images and films are disseminated with the same intent as pornography — to stimulate, arouse and encourage repetition. Neurologically, sex/orgasm and hobby hunting are said to be activated in the same region of the brain, so it comes as no surprise that, in an era of freely available pornography featuring violence against women, addictive hunting films are also used as a superstimulus for trophy hunting. More on the psychology of hobby hunting.

The illegal depiction of violence is a criminal offence that prohibits the dissemination of violent pornography and, in some cases, serious violence against humans and animals. Section 16 of the Penal Code states: “The same applies to anyone who depicts serious acts of violence against humans or animals in moving images, in close-up or in extended form, with the intent to disseminate such images, or who disseminates such a depiction.”

Violence against women and against animals

Common denominator: emotional numbness and the need for power. The emotional numbness of men and their attraction to violence have evolved into an industry of live-filmed violence pornography. The Swedish broadcaster's programme Konflikt on 02.02.2024 examined the question of when sexual abuse becomes a pornographic film in which the abuse of women is real and recorded on camera. Moral boundaries are thus constantly shifting, and a parallel narcissistic development has taken place within Swedish recreational hunting.

Recreational hunting with filmed abuse proves that violence against wildlife has escalated in the same way as violence and violence pornography against women. With camera and weapons technology, recreational hunting has become violent entertainment, as well as a business for the arms industry and trophy hunting. Hobby hunters are filmed live and at close range, with action cameras mounted on hunting dogs and cameras attached to weapons that capture the suffering of the victims.

Lynxes with bleeding eyes, shot beneath rocks, mutilated or trapped in panic up in trees, pursued by dogs equipped with GPS devices — these images reveal the sadism of a large group of hobby hunters who are obsessed with the suffering of animals. The very same hobby hunters who allow large, fast-running dogs to torment small, 9-month-old lynx cubs. At every licensed hunt, small lynx cubs weighing between 10 and 12 kilograms are killed, writes Eva Stjernswärd. The animal welfare problem of recreational hunting is plain to see.

The lynx hunt is an affront to Women's Day in March. The hunters' association has called for more female animals to be killed. Shooting a female animal counts as a “double kill”: mother and foetus. Nevertheless, lynxes are hunted during the mating season and while yearlings are still following their mothers. District councillors who support the trophy hunt on lynxes year after year have not once made use of the district council's right to refuse authorisation for recreational hunting on “animal welfare grounds”.

Gang violence against animals is promoted by the Swedish state

The majority of hobby hunters are men (some even concealing their identity) who are protected by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in secret registers. On one occasion, 15’000 men signed up to kill lynxes! This year, nearly 8’000 registered for 87 animals.

Trophy hunting is thus dominated by hobby hunters from Sweden and abroad. Weapon fetishism is dominated by men, and at the government's request, military AK15 semi-automatic weapons are being introduced for use against animals in 2023. Statistically, men are more prone to violence than women: the murders in Örebro with hunting weapons are the catastrophic proof. Animal cruelty is committed primarily by men and boys. Hunting crimes are committed exclusively by men. More on Crime in the context of recreational hunting.

Violence by men against women remains a disgrace in Sweden. Women must hide to avoid being killed when society fails them — a reflection of how defenceless lynxes are not protected by society, despite being legally protected. But female lynxes and their young receive no “safe shelter” — not even in their rightful home: nature. The historically male-coded war against nature — to subjugate and kill it — finds its most tragic expression when women imitate or actively administer the male norms that have shaped decisions about predator hobby hunting.

The latent sadism is pervasive. Hobby hunters take the time to film a suffering, living wolf pup whose leg has been shot off. Since 2010, the district government’s trophy hunts have not once resulted in hobby hunters being banned from participating in multiple licensed hunts — despite hunting violations being documented every year. Instead, hunters’ associations demand more licensed hunts as a reward for a lifestyle that makes killing a habit.

Nature faces biological collapse and the extinction of biodiversity, particularly of large mammals. As historian Yuval Noah Harari writes in his book «Sapiens», humanity appears, with respect to animal extinction, as a biological serial killer.

Swedish hobby hunting has escalated into a war against animals, combining technology from the military arms industry with medieval animal fights using packs of dogs against defenseless wildlife. The cynical regulations of the district administrative authorities conceal the hell endured by animals and protect hunting activists. For ten years, Eva Stjernswärd has been studying hunting decisions in Sweden and is ashamed of the anti-animal attitudes of decision-makers.

Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell prophesied as early as 1924:

«The collective passions of mankind are mainly evil. Therefore, at the present time, everything that gives men power to indulge their collective passions is bad.»