«The wolf is hunting too»: What the top Grisons hobby hunter leaves out of the official figures

At the start of the Grisons high hunt, Benjamin Hefti, president of the Grisons Cantonal Licence Hunters' Association, told the «Südostschweiz»: «The wolf definitely has an impact on hunting success. The wolf is hunting too.»

That's not wrong. Wolf presence changes the behaviour of red deer, locally increases flight distance and can make hobby hunting more unpredictable.

Nevertheless, Hefti's statement is incomplete. Cantonal hunting planning shows the other side: where stable wolf packs are present, the canton factors wolf losses into its kill quota planning and adjusts the assumed reproduction rate downwards regionally to account for calves killed and not found. If fewer animals grow up, fewer need to be culled through hunting. The wolf is therefore not merely competition for hunters, but a factor that can spare the authorities additional kills in certain regions.

What the wolf does to hunting is not clearly negative

Hefti is right to point out the changed hunting situation. According to the Office for Hunting and Fishing (AJF), red deer respond to wolf presence with increased movement, smaller groups, heightened alertness and greater flight distance. Hunting grounds that used to be predictable can therefore become harder to hunt. At the same time, kills suddenly succeed in places where hunting success was previously barely possible.

The phrase «The wolf is hunting too» vividly captures this changed baseline situation. It shouldn't be attacked as an alleged false claim, and that's not the point anyway. The decisive addition comes from the AJF itself: the wolf does not make hunting impossible; according to the office, it can even regionally boost hunting success. It's not that the wolf «takes the game away from hunters». It changes the conditions: in some cases it makes individual hunting situations harder, in others it contributes to achieving targets. The AJF has also acknowledged elsewhere that the return of predators shifts wildlife distribution and disturbance pressure, as the article «Grisons: Hunting office complains about disturbance of wildlife» shows.

At Calanda, the wolf reduces the need for special hunting

The Calanda pack shows why Hefti's competition narrative falls short. In wolf regions, not only does the behaviour of red deer change, but official planning also responds to the predation. Where stable packs live, the deer's growth rate is lower. If fewer animals grow up, fewer need to be culled to regulate the population. The canton therefore adjusts its kill quotas to wolf presence in regions with stable packs.

This effect became particularly visible on the Calanda massif near Chur, where Switzerland's first wolf pack formed in 2011.«Wolves help regulate the red deer population»: in the two hunting regions there, the red deer population can largely already be regulated through the high hunt in September. The controversial special hunt in November and December can often be dispensed with entirely, or only a few kills are needed. So the wolf does indeed «hunt too», but not only against hunting. Its predation reduces part of that regulatory need which would otherwise have to be covered by additional kills, as regularly carried out during the special hunt.

What matters here is not the claim that the wolf makes all hunting superfluous. It replaces neither the high hunt, nor does it regulate populations on its own, and Hefti is right to dispute exactly that. What matters is: it can significantly reduce the need for the especially contentious special hunt in late autumn and winter. That's the half of the equation that tends to go missing in complaints about hunting success.

What the AJF's figures really show

A look at the mortality statistics puts the wolf's role in sober perspective. From the formation of the first new pack up to 2024, the AJF recorded 1,533 documented wolf kills. In the same period, a total of around 14,400 fallen wild animals were discovered, of which 3,650 were traffic victims and around 4,500 animals died of age, illness or weakness. The wolf is thus a visible and increasingly significant factor within recorded mortality, but not the only, and not automatically the dominant, cause of death. In addition there is an unknown number of undiscovered carcasses, which applies to the entire statistic, not just to wolf kills.

Anyone looking at fallen red deer over the decades recognises the proportions involved. The federally run national hunting statistics show that in Grisons, fallen game has had many causes for decades. Age, illness and weakness as well as traffic accidents have long shaped mortality; the category «prey of large predators» has only become relevant with the return of wolf and lynx. In the long-term mortality statistics, the wolf is therefore a comparatively new but increasingly relevant factor, not the complete explanation for the development of red deer populations.

The selectivity is revealing. According to the AJF, the wolf kills evaluated since 2020 show a high proportion of calves; weak animals and female deer are also frequently recorded. Of the 1,142 wolf kills for which age could be determined since 2020, 55 percent were calves. The wolf therefore disproportionately often kills young animals, thereby influencing annual growth, precisely the figure that is decisive for the following year's kill quota planning. Incidentally, this also makes more hinds huntable, because they are no longer nursing a calf.

The canton-wide null finding cannot be publicly verified

At this point, Hefti could refer to a master's thesis commissioned by the AJF from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU), according to which no direct statistical influence of the wolf on the hunting bag can be demonstrated across the entire canton. It is precisely this canton-wide null finding that the «Südostschweiz» article cites as evidence that the wolf barely affects hunting overall.

The problem is: a publicly accessible version of this work with complete methodology, data basis and results cannot be found. The University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna still lists the project «Influence of wolves on the red deer hunting bag in the canton of Grisons» among its ongoing master's and dissertation projects, supervised by Prof. Klaus Hackländer; it does not appear in the institute's list of completed works. As early as 2023, the AJF had announced it would have the wolf's influence on the deer hunting bag examined the following year through a BOKU master's thesis.

The canton-wide finding referenced by the newspaper cannot therefore be verified in detail. Anyone citing it should disclose on what data basis, for what period, and with what spatial resolution it was arrived at. Without this information, it remains unclear exactly what «no direct statistical influence» measures and what it doesn't.

And even if the finding were to hold up: it does not refute the local effects. The newspaper article itself simultaneously describes regional and indirect wolf effects, changed wildlife distribution, greater flight distances, and locally varying consequences for hunting. These observations cannot be conclusively assessed using a single canton-wide figure. According to the «Südostschweiz», climatic conditions and human interventions, explicitly including hunting, also play a bigger role for deer numbers than the directly measurable wolf influence has so far shown. This too argues against any explanation that places the wolf alone at the centre.

«Not an anti-wolf position»? The association's stance says otherwise

Hefti goes even further in the interview. He says he cannot confirm that there are hunters who no longer purchase a licence because of wolf competition; he has no knowledge of any such case. And the Grisons hunting community, like the cantonal association, does not take an anti-wolf position.

On closer inspection, both statements are weaker than they sound. That Hefti knows of no case of licence renunciation due to the wolf proves only one thing: that he knows of none. Neither conclusion follows from a lack of knowledge; the argument is circular and contributes nothing to the matter.

The second statement carries more weight. Hefti says the Grisons Cantonal Licence Hunters' Association does not take an anti-wolf position. This self-description is in tension with the association's repeated calls for extensive wolf killings, as traced in the article «Grisons licence hunters: Tarzisius Caviezel departs, wolf policy remains». The question is not whether individual members personally reject the wolf. What matters is the political line: anyone who campaigns for the most extensive possible decimation of packs and portrays natural predation as a disruption of hobby hunting can hardly credibly claim to be neutral towards the wolf. The association must be judged by the specific regulatory measures it demands, on what grounds and to what extent — not by its self-presentation.

The lynx

The wolf is not the only predator in Grisons. The lynx also plays an important role with roe deer and chamois. However, for the question discussed here — red deer regulation and kill planning — the wolf is the decisive factor, because the cantonal data and plans explicitly take its effect into account.

The logical error: «The wolf alone is not enough» does not mean «so hobby hunters are needed»

At one point Hefti is even explicitly right, and yet he still draws the wrong conclusion. It has not proven true, he says, that hobby hunters are no longer needed. The wolf alone is not enough to regulate populations. The first half of that sentence is correct and is not disputed here either: the wolf does not regulate on its own.

The error lies in the silent second step. From «the wolf alone is not enough», Hefti concludes, as if automatically, «so hobby hunting is needed». This is a false alternative. That the wolf alone does not replace hobby hunting does not mean that hobby hunting is the only option. Where official regulation remains necessary, the political question arises whether it should be carried out by thousands of licence hunters or specifically by professionally trained game wardens. Hefti leaves out precisely this third option, as practised in the canton of Geneva since 1974. The arguments in favour of it are set out in the Argument paper for game wardens on wildbeimwild.com.

This fundamental question must be kept separate from the actual effect of the wolf. But it shows how truncated Hefti's conclusion is: between «only the wolf» and «thousands of hobby hunters» lies an entire model, long since tried and tested elsewhere.

What should come first in an honest debate

With the phrase «The wolf is hunting too», Benjamin Hefti describes a real experience: red deer react to wolf presence, become more cautious, and are locally harder to hunt. But anyone who turns this into a complaint about hunting success must not omit the other half of the equation.

Less population growth due to wolf presence means fewer necessary kills. The canton already factors wolf-related losses into its kill planning and adjusts the assumed reproduction rate downward regionally to account for calves killed and not found. The wolf is therefore neither the reason hunting becomes superfluous, nor merely the competitor that hunting associations like to portray it as. It is a natural regulating factor, and on the Calanda its predation reduces the need for the special hunt that would otherwise be required after the high hunt.

That the wolf alone is not enough does not yet answer the political question of who should carry out any further interventions. An honest debate must therefore accomplish two things: cleanly distinguish between natural predation, hunting, and human disturbance, and disclose why the remaining regulation must necessarily be entrusted to an armed hobby lobby rather than to a professional wildlife wardens service. That is precisely what should come first.

That the very top representative of the Grisons hobby hunting community leaves out this side of the equation is hardly surprising given the association's pro-kill line. Anyone wanting to know more about the system of the high hunt and its ecological consequences will find the analysis in the dossier «High Hunt Switzerland».