Office for Hunting and Nonsense in St. Gallen modernises hunting education

St. Gallen is launching a revised hunting training programme, intended to provide better preparation, for the 2026/2027 training year.

Apparently, hunting education in the canton of St. Gallen had until now lacked sufficient practical relevance, suffered from unclear structures and maintained low standards.

The aim of the restructuring is to prepare prospective hobby hunters more thoroughly, with greater practical relevance and a stronger sense of responsibility for their future role. In addition to the mandatory introductory module, candidates must acquire hands-on hunting experience alongside the theoretical course content.

Recently, the head of the office, Dominik Thiel, and a game warden demonstrated what this might look like in practice. Both participated, at taxpayers’ expense, in a multi-day wolf hunt in Russia, which was criticised by nature conservation organisations. For target practice, Dominik Thiel shot a grey squirrel out of a tree with a small-calibre rifle for fun and proudly presented it to the camera with a broad grin.

The new 2026/2027 training programme will be conducted in close collaboration with the sectarian hunters’ associations and hunting societies.

Hunting protects nothing and serves no purpose

None of this has anything to do with hunting, respect, science, ethics or animal welfare — it is a serious pathological disorder.

Those who senselessly kill wildlife are not protecting it, and civilized society gains nothing from it. Every year in Switzerland, there are human injuries and fatalities caused by the risk group of hobby hunters. Hobby hunting and its slaughter, organized by cantonal administrations, is neither scientific, wildlife-biologically sound, nor professional wildlife management. The staff of these authorities still maintain the position that animal cruelty is tradition. Not only for the fox is there no numerical culling plan — any hobby hunter can simply shoot at will, according to their mood and whims.

In the chaos in which nature finds itself after decades of stewardship and care by Swiss hobby hunters, the proportion of endangered species is, according to the UN, higher in no other country in the world than in Switzerland.

Amateur hunters have been creating an ecological imbalance in the cultivated landscape for decades, with sometimes dramatic consequences (protective forests, diseases).

The two-year training

Nature lovers actively enjoy wonderful experiences in nature without executing wildlife in order to feel good. There are countless commendable people who also use, nurture, and care for nature — performing sustainable, selfless work with the fire brigade, civil protection, animal welfare, Bergwaldprojekt, building dry-stone walls, maintaining biotopes, completing rural service programs, roe deer fawn rescue, wildlife stations, and so on. None of them would ever think of demanding a violent sacrifice in the form of a living being in exchange, as hobby hunters do.

That one acquires nonsense and unscientific rubbish through the unethical hobby hunter training — much like in a cult — is something the deceived graduate only realizes later.

Anyone who obtains a hunting license always receives two things: a license to kill and a license to become stupefied.

Dossier Hunting Administration St. Gallen:

• Dominik Thiel: Wolf hunter at taxpayers’ 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: culling pressure instead of wildlife management
• Patent hunting as a solution to red deer conflicts?
• Hunting administration St. Gallen: wolf management without science and without credibility
• The authorization to shoot a wolf in the canton of St. Gallen was unlawful
• Public dumbing-down in the canton of St. Gallen
• Office for Hunting and Nonsense in St. Gallen modernizes hunting training
• St. Gallen wants to regulate wolf pack at Gamserrugg
• Controversy surrounding Swissofficial at wolf hunt in Russia
• «Experts» in St. Gallen end wolf regulation for this winter
• The rotten apple in St. Gallen's hunting administration
• Lying hunter became department head in the canton of St. Gallen
• St. Gallen: Stop the fox and badger massacre
• Are BAFU and the hunting administrations still operating responsibly?
• How hobby hunter Simon Meier leads onto the wrong track