Autumn should be a season of tranquility, hiking, and enjoyment.
Colourful forests, crisp air, encounters with nature. But what do we experience instead? Gunshots, hunting dogs, blood, fear. A tiny minority of armed recreational killers — less than two percent of the population — dictates the lives of the majority. Hobby hunters poison the autumn, ruining the lives of residents, walkers, animal lovers, and families.
In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the official line is: forests and paths are for everyone. But reality looks different. As soon as hunting season begins, the hobby hunters take over. Hikers, cyclists, walkers with children or dogs — everyone must ask themselves: Is it safe? Is there a threat of a shot from ambush, a ricochet, a stray projectile?
Hunting turns public space into a place of fear. People who are simply seeking nature and peace become prisoners of an aggressive minority that presumes to declare forests, fields, and even villages its own bloody playground.
Pets: legal victims of the hunting pack
The same scene plays out again and again: hunting dogs storm uncontrolled into private gardens, chase domestic cats, frighten dogs, and threaten children. Beloved pets are torn apart before the eyes of their owners. Complaints come to nothing, because the hunting lobby has secured special privileges over decades.
While every ordinary dog owner is subject to strict regulations, hunting dogs are permitted to chase, kill, and trespass — and their owners laugh at the suffering of the victims.
The list of scandals is long — and it is international:
- Deer driven by packs into residential areas and killed there in a barbaric manner.
- Wild boars panicking into shops and endangering pedestrians and motorists.
- Cats torn apart by dogs in their own gardens.
- Shots fired across roads and public paths.
And meanwhile, hobby hunters declare this to be “tradition,” “nature conservation,” or even “their home.”
Constant violence – constant trauma
Recreational hunting is not only dangerous in the moments when bullets fly or animals die. It is a permanent assault on the lives of non-hunters:
- Gunshots echo through the forests.
- Dog barking shatters the silence.
- The cries of hunted animals penetrate into homes.
- Carcasses are dragged through villages and fields.
- Roads are blocked, walks are prevented.
The forest, the fields, even one’s own garden are no longer safe. People who reject recreational hunting on grounds of conscience are forced to live with this violence — and for nearly the entire year, since the hunting season has long since been extended to twelve months.
Impunity through lobbying
Particularly insidious: while hobby hunters hunt on other people’s land, kill animals, and endanger people, they enjoy broad impunity. In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the hunting lobby protects its members, politicians look away, and authorities turn a blind eye.
Ordinary citizens face fines if their dog runs off the leash for a moment. Hobby hunters, on the other hand, are permitted to let entire packs chase prey without restraint. Different rules apply to them. They are allowed to kill whatever they wish — wildlife as well as pets — and when conflicts arise, the police and judiciary take their side far too often.
Less than 2% control 98%
Fewer than two percent of the population are hobby hunters. Yet they determine the freedom and safety of the 98 percent who carry no weapons, who kill no animals, who simply want to move peacefully through forests and fields.
Hunting is not nature conservation, it is not a custom, it is not a “necessary regulatory mechanism.” It is an outdated instrument of power wielded by a small, aggressive minority that legitimises violence against people, domestic animals, and wildlife.
Germany, Austria, Switzerland — the same picture everywhere: hobby hunters intimidate the population, destroy the peace, traumatise families, and terrorise animals with their aggression.
We must no longer remain silent. It is time to reclaim the forests. It is time to break the monopoly of hunting. It is time to end this bloody tradition.
Our demands:
- Abolition of recreational hunting. Hunting must not be a leisure pursuit for an armed minority.
- Hunting-free zones in all public forests and local recreation areas.
- Safety for walkers, families, children and animals.
- Protection of domestic animals, criminal consequences for hobby hunters and their dogs that injure or kill pets and wildlife.
- Expropriation of hunting rights on third-party properties, no hunting against the will of landowners.
- Ban on driven and coursing hunts, an end to chasing animals into residential areas.
- Dissolution of the hunting lobby in politics and the judiciary, equal laws for all, no special rights for hobby hunters.
- Promotion of peaceful wildlife protection, observation, regulation through non-lethal methods, and a return to genuine connection with nature.
Autumn belongs to all of us, not to the hobby hunters.
