The Office for Hunting and Nonsense in St. Gallen is modernizing hunting training

St. Gallen is starting the 2026/2027 training year with a revised hunting training program designed to provide better preparation.

Apparently, hunting training in the canton of St. Gallen has so far lacked sufficient practical relevance, had unclear structures and low standards.

The aim of the realignment is to prepare aspiring hobby hunters for their future role in a more thorough, practical, and responsible manner. In addition to the mandatory introductory module, practical hunting experience must be gained alongside the theoretical training content.

Recently, the head of the office, Dominik Thiel, and a game warden demonstrated what this can roughly mean in practice. Both participated in a multi-day wolf hunt in Russia at taxpayers' expense, a move criticized by conservation groups. As a bit of fun, Dominik Thiel shot a grey squirrel out of a tree with a small-caliber rifle and proudly presented it to the camera with a broad grin.

The new training course for 2026/2027 will be conducted in close cooperation with the sectarian hunting associations and hunting societies.

Hunting protects nothing and is of no use.

This has nothing to do with hunting, respect, science, ethics or animal welfare, but is a serious pathological disorder.

Those who senselessly kill wild animals do not protect them, nor do they benefit civilized society. In Switzerland, every year there are human injuries and fatalities caused by the high-risk group of recreational hunters. Recreational hunting and its carnage, organized by the cantonal authorities, is not scientific, biologically sound, or professional wildlife management. The employees of these authorities still maintain the position that animal cruelty is a tradition. There are no culling quotas for foxes, allowing any recreational hunter to simply shoot them as they please.

In the chaos that nature finds itself in after decades of care and management by Swiss hobby hunters, the proportion of threatened species is higher in Switzerland than in any other country in the world, according to the UN.

For decades, amateur hunters have been creating an ecological imbalance in the cultural landscape, sometimes with dramatic consequences (protective forest, diseases).

The two-year training

Nature lovers actively create beautiful experiences in nature without killing wild animals to make them feel at home. There are countless commendable people who also use, cherish, and care for nature – performing sustainable, selfless work in the fire department, civil defense, animal welfare, mountain forest projects , building dry stone walls, maintaining biotopes, performing agricultural services, rescuing fawns, working at wildlife rehabilitation centers, and so on. None of them would ever consider demanding a violent sacrifice in the form of a living being, as hobby hunters do.

The defrauded graduate only realizes later that the unethical hobby hunter training, like a cult, leads to the acquisition of nonsense and unscientific drivel.

Anyone who gets a hunting license always receives two things: a license to kill and a license to become stupid.

St. Gallen Hunting Administration Dossier:

• Dominik Thiel: Wolf hunters at state expense – a department head as a security risk for wildlife protection
• Psychology of hunting in the canton of St. Gallen
• Hunting season until New Year's Eve: Shooting pressure instead of wildlife management
• Patented hunting as a solution to red deer conflicts?
• St. Gallen Hunting Authority: Wolf management without science and without credibility
• The permit to shoot a wolf in the canton of St. Gallen was unlawful.
• Dumbing down of the people in the canton of St. Gallen
• The Office for Hunting and Nonsense in St. Gallen is modernizing hunting training
• St. Gallen wants to regulate the wolf pack on the Gamserrugg mountain.
• Controversy surrounding Swiss officials involved in wolf hunting in Russia
• “Experts” in St. Gallen end wolf management for this winter
• The bad apple in the St. Gallen hunting administration
• Lie hunter became department head in the canton of St. Gallen.
• St. Gallen: Stop the fox and badger massacre
• Are the Federal Office for the Environment (BAFU) and the hunting authorities still working responsibly?
• How amateur hunter Simon Meier leads people astray