Hunting in decline, hunting licences at record levels: Germany's special case fact-checked

Italy, Spain, Portugal and the USA have for years been reporting declining hunting participation or a sharply shrinking intake of newcomers.

According to an analysis by the Lega Abolizione Caccia, the number of Italian hunting permits valid for the hunting season fell by 2.7 per cent compared with the previous year. This figure covers hunting authorisations issued or renewed; it is therefore closer to actual hunting participation than a lifelong firearms or examination qualification, but it does not necessarily prove every single day spent hunting. More on this in the article Italy: fewer than 430,000 active hobby hunters. Germany, by contrast, reports more hunting licence holders than ever before. This is not necessarily a contradiction: hunting licence, permit and examination figures do not automatically measure how many people actually go hobby hunting on a regular basis.

Three questions arise: is the decline part of a broader social pattern? Why does hobby hunting depend so heavily on being passed down within families? And what does the German record really show?

A recruitment problem across sectors

The decline in hobby hunting does not stand alone. According to SRF, roughly one in two apprenticeship places in the Swiss meat trade has remained unfilled in recent years. At the end of March 2025, 195 apprenticeship places starting in August were still vacant. This does not automatically point to the same cause as in hobby hunting. The parallel does, however, at least raise the question of whether occupations associated with the killing, butchering and marketing of animals are losing social acceptance among a segment of young people.

Family tradition as the main entry route

An Austrian survey published in 2011 among around 500 active hobby hunters (documented under the title «Zukunftsjäger 2030» on jagdfibel.de) suggests that for many, hunting is passed on primarily through the family: 58 per cent cited a hunting tradition in the family, while networking reasons and an interest in firearms were mentioned considerably less often. The survey is not proof for all countries, but it points to a structural dependence of hobby hunting on social and familial transmission. Unlike an open vocational apprenticeship with its market for training places, there is hardly a second channel that could replace a breakdown in family transmission.

The 2022 annual presentation of the Grisons Office for Hunting and Fisheries identifies the baby-boom cohorts of 1956 to 1968 as the most strongly represented age groups among Grisons hunters. This tallies with the findings of a study on hunters in Spain and Portugal published in 2025 in the journal «People and Nature» (Gaspar et al.), which documents a decline of 26 per cent over 15 years and of 45 per cent over 50 years for the regions examined. The recruitment of young hobby hunters fell by 89 per cent over five decades, and participation in the youngest age group dropped from 1.70 to 0.22 per cent. The researchers speak of a demographic collapse of hunting in the region studied.

A shift in awareness among young people?

In parallel, the diet of young people is changing measurably. The Swissveg Report 2024, based on a representative survey (DemoScope/MACH Consumer), shows that 8.4 per cent of 14- to 34-year-olds in Switzerland describe themselves as vegetarian, compared with 2.1 per cent among those over 55. In total, some 308’000 vegetarians and 50’000 vegans were recorded in 2024, together 5.3 per cent of the population, more than ever before. Whether it can be directly inferred from this that young people therefore less often take up a family hunting tradition is a plausible hypothesis, but one not proven by the dietary data alone.

Spain, Portugal and the USA in detail

In the USA, too, hunting participation as a share of the population is shrinking over the long term, with two different indicators painting the same picture. In terms of hunting licences sold, around 14 million were counted in 1960, roughly 7.7 per cent of the population at the time. For 2020, around 15.2 million hunting licences, or 4.6 per cent of the population, are reported. The absolute figure thus changed far less than the population, which grew strongly over the same period. The report “Recruitment and Retention of Hunters and Anglers” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service additionally measures actual hunting participation among adults through surveys: it fell from 8.9 per cent in 1960 to 4.5 per cent in 2016, the lowest value in the survey series to date.

The German case: a record, but in what respect?

According to the German Hunting Association (DJV), on the basis of data from November 2025 there were a total of 467’682 hunting licence holders, an increase of 42 per cent compared with 30 years earlier. The statistics of the German Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Home Affairs likewise report a practically identical figure of around 467’680 hunting licence holders for 2025. According to the DJV, the proportion of women among newly qualified hunters rose from 20 to 28 per cent between 2011 and 2021.

This record figure shows, first of all, that more people than ever hold or have taken out a hunting licence. It does not, however, answer the further question of how many of them hunt regularly, have a hunting ground at their disposal, only join hunts as guests, or simply keep their licence current. No publicly accessible German nationwide survey that systematically separates the number of hunting licence holders from the number of people who hunt regularly could be identified for this comparison. Without such a survey, the number of hunting licences alone cannot be used to derive direct counter-evidence to the decline in hunting participation in other countries.

The motives for taking the hunting examination are not necessarily identical to the motive of later hunting regularly oneself. In a DJV survey, 62 per cent of the women hunters questioned named keeping their own hunting dog occupied as the most important motive for taking the hunting examination. This does not allow any conclusion as to how often these women hunt, but the survey does show that the hunting examination and the actual practice of hunting are not in every case congruent categories. An observation from our personal circle confirms this impression anecdotally: one woman hunter reported that she had completed the training in order to learn more about nature, and that she would not go on the actual hunt herself.

Conclusion

The available data show no uniform picture, but they do show a clear pattern: in Italy, Spain, Portugal and the USA, hunting participation or the number of newcomers is declining over the long term. In Spain and Portugal, the ageing of hunters is particularly well documented. At the same time, Germany is reporting a record number of hunting licence holders.

This record is not, however, direct evidence of a growing body of active hunters. It shows how many people hold or take out a hunting licence, but not how often they actually hunt. As long as Germany publishes no comparable survey on the regular practice of hunting, it remains an open question whether the rise in hunting licences reflects an actual increase in active hunters, or whether it also includes people who use their licence only occasionally, out of an interest in training, dogs or nature.

The same therefore applies to Switzerland: anyone who wants to assess the future of hobby hunting wants to assess this should distinguish between the examination, the hunting licence, hunting entitlement and actual hunting practice. More on the social context of hobby hunting can be found in the article The hobby hunter in the 21st century and in the dossier on studies about the impacts of hunting. The underlying Italian figures are broken down in detail in the article Italy: fewer than 430,000 active hobby hunters.