Trophies in Bohemia, kills in Alsace, carcasses on Instagram: Dominik Feusi and hobby hunting as a worldview

A post from 4 October 2023 shows a dead roe deer buck lying on the ground next to a rifle.

The animal's empty eyes stare into nothingness. Feusi writes about it: «I am always thankful when everything was right and I had the chance to shoot an animal. It is like becoming part of this huge cicle of nature.» Hashtags: #jagd #hunting #nature #chasse #switzerland.

This is not modesty. It is the classic hobby hunting ideology in its purest form: glorifying one's own act of killing as a spiritual bond with nature, staging the death of an animal as personal fulfilment, and ennobling the whole thing with the aura of the «cycle of nature». What is missing from this worldview is the animal itself. It exists as a projection screen for the shooter's needs, not as a sentient living creature.

Hunting tourism as a programme

Feusi does not only hunt at home. His profile shows a geographical reach that makes the word «hunting tourist» simply fitting.

In May 2024 he posts from Mašovice in the western Bohemian Plzeňský Kraj, Czech Republic. Feusi smiles next to a killed roe deer buck in a field of grain. Caption: «My first roe deer buck in Bohemia, stalked across the open field.» Hashtags: #jagd #bohemia #hunting #pirsch.

In November 2023 he posts from Alsace and the Vosges in France. Orange hunting vest, hat, selfie in front of autumn woods. «Greetings from the forest. Always lovely to be out on the #hunt.» #chasse #hunting #deerhunting #alsace.

In Switzerland he hunts regularly, documented with close-ups of rifles, first-person perspectives from the high seat and trophy photos. In October 2024 he posts the opening of the roe deer hunt with a view across the rifle barrel into the undergrowth: «Roe deer hunt opened.» #meateater. In November 2024 he captures his penultimate hunting day in black and white: «Greetings from the forest, second-to-last hunting day.»

This is not a local hobby hunter who knows and tends his forest. This is hunting tourism across national borders, in which the hunting ground serves as a backdrop for the next kill.

«Ready for the next deer»: the weapon as a lifestyle object

A post from 6 November 2024 shows an opened, engraved double-barrelled shotgun in close-up, two inserted cartridges (RWS Rottweil 12/70), autumnal forest floor in the background. Caption: «Ready for the next deer.» Hashtags: #hunting #stalking #outdoors #nature #arms.

«The next deer». Not «a roe deer», not «game» as part of an ecosystem. «The next deer», like the next item on a list. The language reveals the attitude: the animal as the next target in a series, the weapon as a prop in a curated image. This is not hunting culture. This is hunting as a status symbol.

«Grateful for nature» and what that means

In October 2024 Feusi posts a trophy photo from Switzerland. Hunting clothing, foggy mountain slope, beside him a freshly killed roe deer. He smiles. Caption: «Grateful for nature.» #hunt #hunting #meat #nature. 93 likes.

«Grateful for nature» is, in the language of hobby hunting, a stock phrase for moral self-exoneration: whoever is grateful means well. Whoever says «nature» protects it. What can be seen in the picture refutes the text: a dead body, a smiling shooter, a weapon. Nature features as a backdrop, not as a system worth protecting.

A post from 15 June 2025 makes this relationship to nature even more visible: a densely covered concrete wall, flanked by wine racks, row upon row of mounted red deer and roe deer skulls with antlers. Feusi's comment: «Hunting trophies arranged at the wall.» Hashtags: #hunting #trophies #deer #switzerland.

The day everything falls apart

There is one detail that inextricably links the hunting story and the plagiarism story, and which has never been laid out so clearly anywhere.

On 2 October 2024, Feusi posts a first-person perspective from the Swiss forest, rifle at the ready, gaze fixed on the undergrowth. Caption: «Roe deer hunting season open.» On 3 October 2024, one day later, the «Nebelspalter» publishes the article that he had copied roughly 90 per cent from the British «Telegraph».

Feusi himself explained to «Blick» how it came about: on that day, the «Nebelspalter» urgently needed one more story, and he had been solely responsible for the website. So he translated someone else's text, deleted the source references and published it under his own name.

What Feusi did not say, but his Instagram reveals: he was presumably out hunting. Not in the Federal Palace. Not at his desk. In the forest, with the rifle.

That is the real point of this story. Not the plagiarism as the isolated error of an overworked journalist, but a hobby hunter who values his hunting day more than his profession, who quickly pushes out a stolen story to fill the gap, and in doing so commits a fundamental journalistic fraud. Hobby hunting has displaced journalism. Not once, but structurally.

3’513 posts, one theme: the staging of killing and eating

Dominik Feusi's Instagram profile comprises over 3’500 posts. A common thread runs through the years: the systematic documentation of killed animals and their subsequent consumption. Roebucks freshly shot, roe deer haunches raw on the cutting board, grilled venison ribs with the hashtag #eatyourmeat, trophy walls full of skulls, interspersed with brawn, Käsekrainer sausages, Culatello di Zibello, cured ham, charcuterie of every kind.

This is not an occasional food account. It is a self-staging sustained over years, in which the killing and eating of animals is made the centre of a public identity. The hashtags are revealing: #hunting #eatyourmeat #venison #jagd #meat #trophies. Not a word about sustainability, ecology or animal welfare. Killing as lifestyle, eating as statement.

What Feusi consumes and documents here is medically clearly classified. The WHO/IARC classifies processed meat, that is cured, smoked and fermented meat such as sausages and ham, as a Group 1 carcinogen: carcinogenic to humans. That is the same evidence category as tobacco smoke and asbestos.

The hobby hunting lobby has been selling game meat for years as a healthy, natural alternative to industrial meat. What Feusi's profile shows is the opposite of this narrative: massive consumption of processed meat and red game, combined with the killing of animals as a leisure pursuit, documented with the hashtag #eatyourmeat. Not a connection to nature. Consumption as identity.

Enhancing habitat? The opposite is true

The hobby hunting lobby repeats like a mantra that hobby hunting protects habitat and is necessary for the «balance» of wildlife populations. Feusi's Instagram profile shows what really lies behind it.

A man who shoots his «first roe buck in Bohemia» in the Czech Republic, sits in wait for red deer in Alsace and «opens» the roe deer hunt in Switzerland, is not interested in enhancing habitat. He is interested in the next kill. The hunting ground is not a home he knows and protects, but a resource he harvests, and indeed across borders.

Hunting tourism is the opposite of habitat protection. It brings non-local shooters into hunting grounds that they neither know nor take long-term responsibility for. It reduces wildlife populations not according to ecological criteria, but according to the criterion of the best shooting experience. More on the scientific assessment of these myths can be found in our dossier on hobby hunting.

«Hunter of game»: the author profile as a document

All this would be a private matter, were it not stated on the official author page of his employer. The «Nebelspalter» publicly describes Feusi as a «historian, Schwyz native and hunter, both of game and of good stories». His hobby hunter identity was no secret. It was part of his professional self-presentation as a Federal Palace journalist, listed on equal footing alongside his academic training.

A Federal Palace journalist whose publisher markets him as an active hobby hunter and international hunting tourist is not an independent observer of federal politics. He is a lobbyist with a press pass. The conflict of interest was not hidden. It was the programme.

A milieu that exposes itself

The Feusi case is no operational accident. It is the consistent result of a milieu that places opinion above craft, ideology above integrity, and networking above independence. What his Instagram profile has documented over the years is the ideology of hobby hunting in its most unvarnished form: killing animals as spiritual fulfilment, carcasses as lifestyle content, international hunting grounds as a consumer good, and the WHO-classified cancer risk as a proudly staged menu.

Whoever understands this also understands the «Nebelspalter». And whoever understands the «Nebelspalter» understands why a serious Federal Palace journalist like Fabian Schäfer left the publication before Feusi had even worked a single day.