“I don’t barge into other people’s apartments uninvited.”

It was above all the wolf that once again shaped the media coverage of hunting in the Freistadt district last year. Especially November 7th: On this day, an animal declared a “problem wolf” was shot for the first time in the Unterweißenbach area. Since then, things have calmed down somewhat. This is due to the professional work of the hunters as well as the newly created legal framework, said Chamber of Agriculture district chairman Martin Moser on Sunday at the district hunters’ day in the Freistadt exhibition hall: “The wolf management ordinance issued this year has met with broad approval among the population. It’s time to wait and see is over and we can, if necessary, remove problem animals in a targeted manner based on the law.” Now there must also be a weakening of the protection status at the EU level.

In Upper Austria, hunting stands side by side with agriculture, says district hunter Franz Auinger: “The wolf has arrived in the district and it will stay. Only the hunters have the competence to intervene in regulatory ways in the resulting conflicts.” He appealed to hunters and the public to report any wolf sightings to the Upper Austrian wolf management: “It’s very easy to do, for example by SMS.”

Hunting is becoming more feminine

The wolf is a striking, but overall quite small, detail of hunting activity in the Freistadt district. 988 hunters and 129 huntresses are active in the 33 cooperative hunts and 12 private hunts in the Freistadt district. The fact that hunting is becoming more female was also evident when attending the district hunters’ day with numerous women in the exhibition hall. In order to bring their activities closer to the non-hunting population, numerous activities are carried out: from their own stand at the Mühlviertel adventure fair to visits to schools and the marketing of game in combination with cooking courses. “We have to have this dialogue again and again in order to get our concerns across to the people,” says Auinger.

Hunting must also act as an advocate for wild animals. Growing settlement areas and the trend towards sport and exercise in the great outdoors would expose game to ever greater pressure. “We hunters do not claim an exclusive right to stay in the forest,” says Auinger. However, it is problematic for wild animals when more and more people are out and about in nature at any time of day and with all kinds of devices – from mountain bikes to drones: “I don’t barge into other people’s homes uninvited.”

Problem child pheasant

The extent to which this pressure is already having an impact on game populations is shown by the pheasant population, which has been declining sharply for years. Auinger: “The stocks have halved in the last ten years.” Apart from a few outliers, the route results for other wild species – from foxes to wild boars – are quite consistent. The fact that significantly more rabbits were killed last year is a long-term consequence of the pandemic: the hunts that were canceled at the time are now being carried out regularly again. This also increases the number of brown hares being shot.

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