Animal Cruelty with Swiss Involvement
A Swiss hobby hunter from Baselland, who regularly participates in cruel driven hunts at home and abroad with his scent hounds, is being monitored by various anti-hunting organisations and is also criticised by fellow hobby hunters.
On 26 October 2024, an annual driven hunt organised by hunting leaseholder and investment banker Dr. Walter Kuna was held in Wehrheim, Hesse (D-61273) — an event that animal welfare advocates and hunting opponents have had in their sights for some time.
Among those present were representatives of Hunt Watch from Switzerland.
Once again, a Swiss hobby hunter with a large number of scent hounds has been deployed in what is rightfully criticised as recreational hunting with dogs on wild animals. According to the website of Daniel Gerber, born in 1963, he is a farmer. Apparently, suitable scent hounds from the local area in Hesse are not available. The multi-hour animal transports in cramped crates may constitute a regular ordeal for the hunting dogs from Switzerland. It is not known which border crossings Daniel Gerber uses for the long journeys abroad.
These scent hounds of various breeds are partly bred for hunting elk, tigers and bears — not for smaller and less formidable wild species such as wild boar and roe deer.
Nevertheless, these long-legged dogs are repeatedly used on hunts, giving rise to clear situations in which wild animals are made to suffer greatly. Among other things, the hobby hunter in question proudly offers insight on his own scent hound website into practices that are cruel to animals and held in the utmost contempt by other hobby hunters.
In the footage captured by Daniel Gerber, it is clearly visible that living wild animals are forced to endure mortal terror while surrounded by an agitated pack of hunting dogs. The owner of the hunting dogs is often unable to shoot the animal because the distance to his dogs is too small, nor does he have his dogs under control during the confrontation — despite being positioned directly beside the screaming wild animal, which is made to suffer needless and incomprehensible stress, fear, and pain. Animal fights are strictly prohibited under animal protection law in both Germany and Switzerland.
Rather than killing the animal as swiftly as possible with a cold weapon (hunters' parlance), meaning a knife, hobby hunters evidently prefer to calmly photograph and film the death throes, material they subsequently use for promotional purposes on websites and social media. Hobby hunters revel, time and again, in the suffering of a shot wild animal being mauled by their hunting dogs. Such cases are not the exception but the rule at driven hunts and battue hunts.
On a hunt at the end of October 2024 in the German federal state of Hesse, such scenes occurred once again — witnessed and documented by several hunting opponents. The dogs of Daniel Gerber were involved in an incident in which a wild boar in particular was subjected to severe torment and mortal terror. The animal repeatedly emitted fear-stricken screams, clearly audible in several videos recorded on-site. The death struggle lasted several minutes, needlessly subjecting the animal to pain and anguish. A criminal complaint was subsequently filed. These hunting dogs were not under control, endangered road traffic between Wehrheim and Pfaffenwiesbach, and even appeared uncontrolled within the residential area of Pfaffenwiesbach.
Whenever anyone dares to state plainly what hobby hunters and their supporters truly are — namely animal abusers — the outrage within hunting circles is frequently considerable.
Complaints then repeatedly land in the letterboxes of hunting opponents, all of which ultimately come to nothing. The tactic behind this is straightforward: intimidation. Yet this approach is deeply misguided, for the hunting fraternity forgets that every complaint filed against hunting opponents only sharpens the focus on hobby hunting further. The animal-abusive practice of hobby hunting remains a topic of public discourse, and society increasingly engages in critical examination of the militant hunting scene.
Hobby hunters in particular always feel they are in the right when confronted with the truth. But just because many brutal and violent acts against animals committed by them are deemed legal does not mean that they do not constitute animal cruelty.
The aforementioned hobby hunter from Basel-Landschaft is not permitted to legally hunt with some of his dogs in Switzerland. He therefore promotes hunting in border regions abroad, where he can set all his dogs on other animals. In hunting circles, this behavior is considered perverse, Hunt Watch concludes.
