Living vegan, rejecting recreational hunting: why a new study of 2,161 vegans also concerns opponents of recreational hunting

The psychologist Guido F. Gebauer has identified four distinguishable groups for the portal vegan.eu: commitment-oriented vegans (50.8%), lifestyle vegans (33.0%), pragmatic vegans (13.1%) and vegan borderline cases (3.1%).

More than 83 percent live highly consistently, avoiding animal-derived substances in food as well as in materials, and reject «pleasure-oriented animal use».

This is precisely where the bridge to hunting criticism begins. For recreational hunting is nothing other than the most radical form of pleasure-oriented animal use: the killing of free-living Wild animals for personal enjoyment, disguised as «wildlife management», «tradition» or «nature conservation».

Anyone who avoids animal suffering cannot legitimise recreational hunting

The ethical logic of a vegan lifestyle and consistent criticism of recreational hunting are identical. Both positions assume that a sentient animal has an inherent interest in its own life and must not be killed for human enjoyment, sporting competition or culinary convenience.

What vegans decide in the supermarket, recreational hunting opponents decide in the forest: no animal product, no shot, no dead body for the display case. The only difference lies in the setting, not in the attitude.

The finding regarding the largest group, action-oriented vegans, is particularly revealing. They combine a consistent lifestyle with political commitment to animal rights. This exact profile is also found among the most active recreational hunting critics: people who not only abstain privately, but publicly take a stand against driven hunts, trap hunting, earth hunting and the systematic persecution of predators such as wolf, lynx and fox.

The recreational hunting argument collapses

The recreational hunting lobby likes to invoke “necessity”, “regulation” and an “ecological mandate”. The existence of 2,161 vegans who manage without a single dead animal dismantles the necessity argument on the consumption side. And numerous wildlife-biology findings dismantle it on the regulation side: functioning ecosystems regulate themselves through predators and natural population dynamics, not through the recreational hunter in camouflage gear.

Whoever lives vegan proves with their own body that animal products are dispensable. Whoever criticises recreational hunting draws the logical conclusion for the free-living wild animal too: it is just as little there to be killed as the domestic pig or the dairy cow.

The vegan movement and recreational hunting criticism belong together

The study shows that vegan identity is deeply anchored in the largest group, extending even to the choice of partner. This consistency is the natural ally of a consistent critique of recreational hunting. Both movements need each other: the vegan community provides the ethical foundation, while recreational hunting criticism transfers it to the last great blind spot — the wild animal in the so-called hunting ground.

Anyone reaching for oat milk in the supermarket should not stay silent in autumn when the driven hunt season begins. And anyone writing against recreational hunting should ask themselves what is on their own plate. Consistency knows no product range.