Video: Farmer attacks hunters' vehicles
In the French Vosges, a scene unfolded that is emblematic of the increasingly strained relationship with recreational hunting.
A farmer deliberately drove his vehicle at several cars belonging to recreational hunters that were parked at his maize field in order to “count wild boar.”
The scene, which has since gone viral on social media, illustrates how deeply the conflict surrounding recreational hunting has taken root and how much the hunting system itself contributes to escalation.
The recreational hunters explained that they merely wanted to determine how many wild boar were in the field. Such “monitoring operations” have long become routine in many regions, often with the aim of subsequently legitimising high kill quotas.
For the farmer, however, the situation was clear: once again, recreational hunters had turned up unannounced at his field, observing his crop areas and treating the land as their private hunting ground.
The escalation: anger against a system that no longer works
The farmer drove aggressively towards the recreational hunters' vehicles, narrowly missing them. A dangerous, yet understandable outburst of anger from a man who has had enough of a system that, on the one hand, burdens him with wildlife damage and, on the other, protects the principal cause of that damage: recreational hunting itself.
For it has long been scientifically established:
- Hunting does not keep wild boar populations low — it can even increase them.
- Baiting stations and supplementary feeding artificially drive population growth.
- Constant disturbance caused by recreational hunting leads to greater mobility and more damage.
- The absence of natural predators is deliberately perpetuated by the hunting lobby and supported by policy.
Nevertheless, the myth of “necessary killing” continues to be cultivated, and farmers as well as wildlife suffer as a result.
A Europe-wide problem
Conflicts between recreational hunters, farmers, hikers, and animal welfare advocates are increasing across Europe. Whether in the Vosges, the Black Forest, Switzerland, or Austria: everywhere, the non-traditional hunting system, shaped by lobby structures, is reaching its social limits.
The incident in the Vosges illustrates not only the escalation of an individual, but the escalation of a system. A system that pits nature, animals, and people against one another. A system that relies on shooting rather than ecology. A system that increasingly threatens social peace.
The surreal scene in the cornfield is no coincidence. It is a warning signal. As long as recreational hunters continue to dominate fields, forests, and public spaces unchallenged, without assuming ecological responsibility, such incidents will keep increasing.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on the criticism of recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
