When the «institute» defends hobby hunting: a fact check

Under the heading «Ethics of hunting – speechlessness of the hunting associations!», a piece appeared in May 2026 that is attracting attention in hunting circles.

It was written by Dr Wolfgang Lipps, managing director of the «JUN.i Institute for Hunting, Environment and Nature Conservation». The text accuses the German Hunting Association (DJV) of failing to justify hobby hunting, and promptly supplies the supposedly better arguments itself. We have examined them.

The conclusion first: the criticism of the DJV is remarkable because it comes from within its own ranks. The counter-argument offered in defence of hobby hunting, however, fails to stand up to factual scrutiny at several decisive points.

Who is speaking here: not a neutral institute

The term «institute» raises expectations of scientific independence. That expectation is misleading. The «JUN.i Institute» is a registered limited company based in Liepe near Eberswalde, founded in 2009, whose business purpose is the preparation of expert reports as well as advisory services in the field of hunting and hunting law. Attached to it is a commercial management consultancy. Managing director Lipps was a commercial lawyer for almost five decades, is a passionate hobby hunter, a trainer of young hunters and the author of several hunting-friendly books.

What we have here is not a neutral research institute, but a declared advocate of hobby hunting who also profits economically from consultancy and publications relating to hobby hunting. Anyone who reads the term «institute» and expects academic distance is falling for a clever piece of self-labelling.

The same applies to the second authority on which the article relies: the «Forum Lebendige Jagdkultur» (Forum for Living Hunting Culture). It sounds like a think tank, but it is an association founded in 1996 of hunting writers, artists and «friends of the hunt», which according to its statutes is dedicated to the cultivation of «hunting culture» and explicitly opposes a sober wildlife management. Anyone who is enthusiastic about hunting culture can become a member. This too is interest representation, not science.

The figures: roughly correct, but misleadingly framed

The article opens with the image of «471,000 people» who are allowed to «roam through forest and field armed», as evidence of an allegedly «growing popularity» of hunting. The official figure is somewhat lower: according to statistics from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, around 460,770 people held a hunting licence in 2024.

More decisive, however, is what the figure conceals. A hunting licence is an official certificate of competence, not a proof of activity. According to estimates, only about 250,000 to 300,000 of these people actually hunt regularly; a considerable proportion obtain the licence «as a reserve» or for other reasons. Deriving a growing «popularity of hunting» from a growing number of issued licences is therefore statistically unsound. Those who want to take a closer look will find the discussion of this in our article How many hobby hunters in Germany are really active.

The hunting bag figures mentioned (around 1.3 million roe deer, around 550,000 wild boars in the 2023/24 hunting year), on the other hand, are consistent with the official data.

Fallacy 1: Nature as a teacher of morals

The heart of the argument is at the same time its greatest weakness. The article declares the principle of «eat and be eaten» to be the «fundamental principle of nature» and derives from it an «ethically obligatory primordial legitimation of hunting».

This is a classic naturalistic fallacy: from what happens in nature, nothing follows about what humans ought to do. Disease, parasitism and the death of young animals are likewise «principles of nature», yet no one declares them to be ethical commandments. Whoever justifies killing by pointing to the course of nature also undermines their own claim, which the text itself formulates a few paragraphs earlier: that hunting must be «ethically defensible». Ethics begins precisely where humans detach themselves from mere natural events.

In addition: hobby hunting is not a nutritional necessity but a leisure pursuit. The comparison with the natural predator that kills out of hunger therefore falls flat from the outset.

Fallacy 2: «In the beginning was the hunt» – an outdated thesis

The article bases the legitimation of hunting on a grand narrative: 1.7 million years ago, hunting is said to have initiated the emergence of humankind (the «venatory revolution»). In the same breath, the author concedes that «numerous specialist disciplines» have criticised or doubted this so-called «Man the Hunter» thesis, but then rescues it with the formula that it has «the argument of historical plausibility on its side».

That is exactly the point: plausibility is not proof. The thesis is regarded in modern anthropology as largely outdated, not least because the importance of gathering, the share of women in food procurement, and the role of scavenging were long underestimated. Even if the narrative were true, the logical break would remain: that our ancestors hunted does not justify a right to leisure hunting in the present. This is once again the inference from the is to the ought.

The same pattern is evident in the alleged «genetically rooted hunting instinct»: introduced without evidence and immediately qualified again with the admission that it «cannot legitimise hunting in itself». An argument that retracts itself within the same sentence carries no weight.

Fallacy 3: The constitution as a one-sided key witness

Finally, the article invokes the Basic Law: hunting, through the hunting right associated with land ownership, partakes in the protection of Art. 14 of the Basic Law and serves «the common good».

This interpretation is not wrong, but selective. The text cites Art. 20a of the Basic Law, which places natural resources and animals under state protection, but ignores that this article can specifically limit the freedom of property. The cited Art. 14 of the Basic Law also contains the sentence «Property entails obligations» and allows the legislator to restrict its use in the interest of the common good. The social obligation of property, which the article invokes as an argument for hunting, in reality works in both directions: it can limit hunting just as much as enable it. Deriving from the Basic Law a quasi-untouchable status for hobby hunting is an overreach.

The rhetorical framing

Finally, the tone is striking. Opposing positions are dismissed as «uninformed platitudes and cheap empty phrases», the silence of the DJV is compared to the «defence strategy of the German armed forces». Animal ethics appears only in its «extreme form» as an animal rights movement, that is, as a caricature against which it is easy to argue. The whole broad field of animal-ethical positions, which soberly asks about the justification of killing, does not appear. And in the midst of the supposedly ethical debate, the author promotes his own forum, his own lecture paper, and a book from his own ranks.

The article is revealing, but in a different way than it intends. It shows that even within the ranks of hobby hunters there is dissatisfaction with how the associations present themselves. And at the same time it demonstrates where a justification of hobby hunting fails as soon as it is supposed to go beyond mood: it confuses nature with ethics, prehistory with the present, and a one-sided reading of the constitution with binding force. An «institute» in the name and an association behind it cannot replace a sound argument.

The actual question that the article itself raises remains unanswered: why a leisure activity that kills wild animals should still be ethically required in a society with a secure supply of food. Speechless here is not only the DJV, but also the institute.