Volker Böhning: Hunting for the Trash Can

Volker Böhning, President of the German Hunters' Association and head of the Mecklenburg Hunters' Association, leaves no stone unturned in his attempts to cast those who pursue the killing of wildlife as a leisure activity in a supposedly favorable light.

In the online edition of the FAZ, one can read that most hobby hunters fulfill “honorarily” a “socially relevant mandate” and deserve support. Under no circumstances should they “hunt for the trash can.”

Because the restaurant industry has dropped out as a buyer for game meat due to Corona, and there has also been an oversupply of wild boar venison for about two years, demand for it has collapsed. The lobbyist exploits this situation and the political demand for even more culling of roe deer and red deer to call for financial support for the procurement of mobile refrigerated containers for harvested game.

“This is hypocritical reasoning,” fumes Lovis Kauertz of Wildtierschutz Deutschland. “The hunting association president isn’t actually concerned with any kind of ethics in hobby hunting. Even today, hobby hunters kill at least four out of six million animals destined for the trash can.” Who actually eats fox, raccoon, a cat, swans, or carrion crows?

All predators and the vast majority of game birds have always been hunted “for the bin.” Even the Fellwechsel GmbH, founded by the hunting association to create the impression that killed foxes, badgers, or martens are being processed, is nothing more than window dressing: a mere two to three percent of all killed fur-bearing animals are actually utilized,97 out of 100 foxes are disposed of or hung in the hedge at the hunting blind as bait. More on the hunting myths at wildbeimwild.com.

The double standards of hunting president Volker Böhning

The statement “Under no circumstances should hobby hunters hunt for the bin” reveals the double standards of a large portion of the recreational hunting community. Volker Böhning is by no means referring to all animal species, but exclusively to so-called cloven-hoofed game. This includes, among others, wild boar, roe deer, and red deer. But even with these species, a large proportion is carted off to the animal rendering plant after a recreational hunt. Many animals are too scrawny to be worth processing as food. Others are so shot up or have become inedible due to released stress hormones that they cannot even be made into goulash.The bin rule does not apply to other wildlife: The fact that foxes, grey herons, or raccoons are disposed of almost exclusively after a recreational hunt — even though this recreational hunting causes considerable suffering — is interpreted as “sportsmanlike” by the “volunteers with a socially relevant mandate.” We explain why recreational hunting fails as population control on wildbeimwild.com.