This is a beautiful and expressive posting of you, Mike, and it is my pleasure (while also some challenge) to respond to you in kind, and hopefully also in adequate kindness. ;-) I agree with you on some aspects, and differ on some others. My own _perspective_ is certainly different because I am on the ground at the one hand, yet also am much involved on the state and federal organization level on the other hand, hence have an oversight and multiperspectivity which most German hunters do not have.
I try to focus my response a bit on the weapons aspect, because that is where the thread stated. However, weapons (apart from being lovely adult toys) are also tools, and hence cannot be discussed without keeping the ambit of their respective use(s) in mind. Just recently, I have much enjoyed to learn that in the SSZ Suhl, the second "Drilling Cup" has now been announced for summer. Its multi-disciplinary rules are very entertaining and interesting.
It broke my heart to think hunting in Germany has changed so much that it would be unrecognizable.
The game as such is still recognizable. Its species and selection, largely no longer, and the employ of dogs and hounds is also very different from the past. Same goes for the favourite dog breeds. Hunting styles are different too. The omnipresent "shooting towers" of today which populate or maybe uglify the remotest corners in the countryside, were unheard of 100 years ago, even 75 years ago. Also, nigh nobody drove (!) to hunting, such would have been considered utterly foppish and unsporting; *exactly* like Squire Toad at Toad Hall with his annoying automobile ("The Wind in the Willows"). You walked or cycled.
A hunter of 1910 or 1920 would not understand why people would use a rifle on roe deer (!) instead of a shotgun. He would regard that as a self-aggrandizing boastfulness of a wannabe, who could not efford an invitation of an East European magnate to a "Hochwildjagd" in Transsylvania or Ruthenia, or a voyage to the colonies. Reversely, he would be shocked to learn that while most hunters still do own a shotgun somewhere in a dusty corner of the gun safe (80-85 % of new acquisitions in the last 45 years being an O/U, with semi-autos, SxS and pump action making up the remainders), yet nearly no-one is using it. At most once a year to shoot one or two ducks near a pond.
On reflection, I just don't believe it can be entirely true.
I have certainly
accentuated my points rather strongly, as you have recognized. But I have not
exaggerated any issue, not even a single point.
Hunting with birds of prey was supposed to no longer exist after muzzle loading guns came to be, yet even I have had the privilege watching the amazing interaction between the birds, dogs, and men (also women).
Yes, falconry still exists, just as renaissance faeries. You need a special exam and a special licence for this hunting style.
One other example: "Eingestelltes Jagen" of the Court, courtiers, and the sundry illustrious, gracious and serene invitees, is said to have ended in the year 1912, and indeed its various existing descriptions sound very much "ancien régime".
Yet the new, modern consideration of boar hunting as primarily dire and laborious wildlife management (in the agricultural interest of landowners), as well as of mass culling by veterinary concern (African Swine Fever !!)), and the extremely pressing demands of protection hunting in the Alpine areas, with the necessary VERY drastic reduction of the immense and truly dangerous over-stocks of cloven hoof game in the mountains of Bavaria, Liechtenstein, Austria and Switzerland, are now leading to a revival of culling and redution methods that in practice much resemble the "eingestellte Jagden" (note different spelling) of the 18th and 19th centuries. That includes fencing via enclosures and boar trapping; their excellencies the Oberhofjägermeister[s] of 1840-1870 would no doubt have been delighted about such efficiency and certainty of hunting success.
While the large Liechtenstein family in Austria still celebrate, on their vast latifunds, a bit old-style "bird shooting" in classic British or Bohemian style (I hope with gun bearers !)), their sovereign ruling cousins in the eponymous lovely Alpine-Rhenanian principality have recently sanctioned one of the more modern hunting laws of Europe. It was long overdue, and it has become a big success. Reactionary and egoistic hunters (a mere 425 blokes or so) tried by teeth and claws to block it, but they were vanquished, much to the benefit of people and country. The prince and the hereditary prince themselves no longer have any hunting interest in the mini country itself, and their own hunting there in a rather small plot around the residence castle was given up in the 1970s as I recall.
And even some of Hermann Göring's trophy-acquisition shooting trips - he was also very fond of more or less shamelessly inviting himself, and woe to the host if the illustrious guest was not honoured by a proper and becoming trophy, such as ordered and expected - were (not soooo secretly) still conducted in this way.
Nowadays, the winter reduction of red deer in parts of Austria is best - though not very "nobly" by the mundane bourgeois standards of today's hunters, while the REAL nobility back then found it extremely noble and befitting ! - conducted via rapid mass shooting in feeding enclosures. Minimal stress and environmental impact, efficient dispatching, best dressing and treatment of the gained venison.
Muzzle loading guns were supposed to go away, when cartridge guns came to be, yet we still have special hunts and special seasons for primitive weapons (including bows as well as muzzle loaders).
Alas, the reactionary nature of the old German federal hunting law (basically, it still is the main text of 1934 with a few bells and whistles, from which the odd swastikas were meanwhile purged in the early 1950s; now please imagine a US traffic code on the regulation base of a 1934 Oklahoma traffic statute), and the majority of the state hunting laws, which since the Federalization Reform of the Constitution in 2004 have legal and practical precedence before those residues of the Reich,
forbid bow hunting and the employ of muzzle loaders.
The main hunting assciations in Germany utterly HATE the mere idea of bow hunting, with a vile and vicious spite, and they constantly polemicize against its potential - even very limited - legalization whenever the topic comes up. Our bow hunters - most of them very capable - can only hunt abroad thus. By the way, I am none and am not even interested either. But the primary trait and first feeling of the Common German Hunter is raging intolerance, mixed with hunting envy (Feind --> Todfeind --> Enemy of the Reich and the German People --> Reviernachbar), and that distinguishes German hunters from most other hunters worldwide.
Black powders cartridges are allowed though. Shotgun slugs are legally allowed, even without an energy limit, and without nominal distance limit, but are much more shunned by the hunters in practice than they were still say 60 or 50 years ago, because of safety concerns (exactly the contrary of US practice thus - interesting !). On most driven hunts, they are explicitly FORBIDDEN by the organizers. Also, many shooting ranges do not allow practice with them, because of feared damage.
Hunting with double guns was supposed to be killed by the development of pump and autoloading shot guns over a century ago; yet here we are on a forum dedicated mostly to double and related guns.
Alas, the aforequoted reactionary and intolerant mentality of the hunting associations militated and still militates against slide-action and semi-automatic shotguns. Yet the real feelings of the REAL German hunters on the ground, in contrast to their "representative functionaries", were quite different even back then in 1905. The FN 5 shotgun was quite popular with real German hunters, and the Browning FN 1900 auto-loader (only) in .35 Remington was a covetted (and expensive) rifle in Germany, such as the early Winchester autoloading rifles also were.
And none less then the Hallowed Forefather, Guru and Grand Poohbah of shotgunning in Germany, the great
Albert Preuß himself, the true Papa Smurf (and also an Olympian in RL), used a Winchester 1887 or 1901 lever action shotgun and was very proficient with it. If you were to tell this any Germany hunting functionary of today, he would immediately succumb to a heart attack.
Germany today is a rifle hunting country. Shotguns are known from the hunting exam and its preparation, also from the mandatory shots that you would have had to fire and show proof of, before applying for the exam. But the number of people who actually use them in hunting, is very small. For reason. And sportive shotgun use (ISSF) has become virtually unheard of. A single county in England and Scotland has more sportive and recreational shotgunners than the entirety (!) of the unified two Germanies. Totally the contrary of the UK & Ireland, of France and of either side of the Mediterranean. Starkly contrary.
I had heard from others that the hare, pheasant, and partridge populations have gone down, but not away. I saw the beginning of this on my second tour when a lot of cover was lost by the conversion to cropland of ditches and other overgrown areas.
Any hunter who today states "Oh yes, I have still hares and rabbits in my Revier" means that he is able to bag one or two of them in a year (!) without exterminating the entire population. Pheasants inhabit zoos and musea. I did see two in the last 10 years. Partridges exist in isolated spots, ecological niches, while thousands and tens of thousands of €uros are invested in them by some idealistic aficionados, but to no lasting avail. A few pigeons and many crows, well, yes, these exist. And geese. Noxious beasts. The bane of farmers.
At the same time, the population of pigs increased which put more stress on the small game.
The most hunted vertebrae species in Germany are boars, roe deer, foxes. Still 60 years ago, a single boar would be a rare sight, and a reason for many hunting stories and yearning yarns, for months. Today, many consider them (alas, unfairly and unethically) as some sort of omnipresent pest. Populations have exploded and continue to grow. Hence the resort to legalizing boar trapping. Here (and also in Japan), the average boar is wiser and wilier than the average hunter, hence their ever-growing number.
But on the other hand, wolves have come back to Germany, and golden jackals too. Both proliferate. In the next 10 years, both species will probably enter the hunting laws.
Unlike in the US, game in Germany has a direct economic value and is an important food and income source and hunting the is way this is realized.
Sounds true and duly appreciative (thank you); but actually is not true, in the light of the day. Expounding on that would need more space and time.
Even with this, hunting will continue. [...] There will always be hunters, and they will always have guns (some of which will be drillings), hunters will always tell their grandchildren and great grandchildren how they hunted in the "old days".
Hunting must always change and be changed, in order to remain the same. You know the original quotation from the "Gattopardo". Its in-role author however was not the old Principe Salinas (unforgettable also in his impersonification by Burt Lancaster), but his nephew Tancredi.
When the children grow up, they will want to do it the "old" as well as the "new" way. It is up to us to leave our heirs the wherewithal to keep the traditions alive, including the guns, tools and components to load ammo, books and other writings to inform them how and why. We always have to be sure we don't allow their rights to be lost because of some convenience for us.
Work in progress now...
But I have to post now unfinished, lest I lose this long draft. The text will subsequently be amended and completed a bit more (at least that is what I intend... ;-) ).
Weidmannsheil,
Carcano
