The “sportsmanlike” hunting of wild boar
Half of all wild boar killed in summer are nursing mothers. “Sportsmanlike” hunting is an illusion.
Nursing mothers are killed
Is it long gone, or did it ever truly exist? Seeben Arjes, a blood-tracking dog handler well known for numerous critical publications, remarked as long as 20 years ago that, based on his observations, half of all sows killed in summer in the fields are nursing mothers.
Climatic changes improve food availability, vast maize and rapeseed crops enrich it in the short term, and baiting is in many places still not restrictively regulated. A particularly significant factor, however, is also the politically driven, entirely indiscriminate and thus counterproductive hunting of this highly developed species. The recreational hunters fail at population control.
intensification of recreational hunting fails
The politically driven intensification of wild boar hunting, which over the past approximately 15 years has systematically dismantled all animal welfare standards and in the process destroyed all remaining intact social structures within the population, amounts to nothing more than a damp squib.
The number of wild boar killed annually continues to rise despite the greatest hunting efforts: from an average of 477’000 wild boar killed per year ten years ago to 625’000 in the 2020/21 hunting season. The current population is estimated, according to calculations by Wildtierschutz Deutschland at approximately 1.5 to 1.7 million animals.
Recommendations
Wildtierschutz Deutschland recommends: centralised, nationwide coordination of wild boar population management, introduction of closed seasons for all age classes from 1 January to 30 September, full protection of adult sows, consistent criminal prosecution of hunting practices not conducted in a sportsmanlike manner, as well as accompanying research into the administration of contraceptives. More on the topic of animal welfare problems of recreational hunting and Wildlife.
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More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on the criticism of recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
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.
