Mass media outlets are increasingly permitting themselves to publish biased articles about hunters and hunting, stoking hatred between social groups and profiting from advertising on this wave of emotion. The more clicks, the more views. Comments are barely censored at all, allowing calls to kill or otherwise take drastic and cruel revenge on hunters, their family members, and even their pets. Unfortunately, as a result of the cultivation of such views, some individuals move from comments to real action.

“You should be shot yourself, the way you shoot those poor little animals!”

Attacks on individuals in person and in the online environment, calls to shoot, cut into pieces, burn along with family and children, destruction of property, interference in professional and private matters, damaging hunting infrastructure, and sabotaging hunts. How have we arrived at such an absurdity, and what can hunters do about it?

A hunter from Zemgale, who wished to remain anonymous for understandable reasons, spoke about the events that took place the day before the destruction of forest infrastructure—a hunting tower. “I went for an evening hunt, hoping to wait for wild boar to emerge into a farmer's field. The landowner asked for help in protecting the crop, which a substantial herd of hogs can flatten very quickly, and that means major losses. I arrived in the early evening and set myself up. I was quietly thinking about work matters and enjoying the peaceful evening, when suddenly I saw a car approaching along the gravel road. A gentleman stepped out of it and approached my hunting tower with a brisk pace. When I asked him what he wanted, the answer was that he wanted to see the person who could shoot a defenceless animal. We had a conversation in slightly raised tones. I explained what I was doing here and why, that everything was within the framework of the law and I had the right to hunt here, but that he, on the other hand, should not be here. That ended the evening's discussion. And, effectively, my hunt too. Having shot nothing, I went home. However, when I returned to the grounds the next day, the tower had been overturned and broken. There was nothing left to do but take the remains away,” the Zemgale hunter said about his encounter with an opponent of hunting.

Another hunter from Vidzeme says that he had problems with the tenants of a certain piece of land. “The land belongs to an owner with whom we have signed a contract for the transfer of hunting rights, but he leases this area to a farmer. His family has different convictions regarding the consumption or non-consumption of food products than the majority of people. This family is accustomed to sabotaging hunts by driving around the fields and gravel roads in their off-road vehicle, revving the engine and playing their music player as loudly as possible. Fortunately, it all ended once a pragmatic offer was made by the landowner,” the hunter said, explaining that the head of the hunting club and the owner of the mentioned area went to the tenant together with an offer to end hunting in the mentioned areas on one condition. Any losses caused by wild game animals would be compensated by the tenant in full from his own pocket. “Then he himself agreed to move the hunting tower to a better location,” the hunter laughs.

Quite often, hunters encounter human aggression during driven hunts. A member of a Latgale hunting club, a huntress, said that while she was standing on the hunting line, a BMW SUV pulled up to her, from which two men stepped out and aggressively demanded she move away from the road because they needed to take a photo of a road post. “There were hunters to my right and left, but each at a distance of 100-150 metres. I didn't really know how to behave and tried to speak very calmly. The situation was very ambiguous. I had a loaded weapon on my shoulder, and here were two unknown men!” the huntress recalls.

During a driven hunt, another huntress was approached by an aggressively inclined lady who shouted that shooting animals was forbidden and demanded to know how the woman could kill and why she was doing it. If one were to use a situation on the road as an analogy, such interference in the progress of a driven hunt creates dangerous situations, endangering all persons involved.

Point 91.7 of the Hunting Regulations stipulates that it is prohibited to damage elements of forest and hunting infrastructure (e.g., hunting towers, feeding troughs, walkways, bridges), as well as to disrupt the progress of a hunt.

Anti-hunting articles and video testimonies published in the online environment also influence the thinking of certain individuals and often escalate into psychological terror, especially if the hunter who has become a victim has a profile on social networking sites. Hunting haters send threatening letters, express grave insults, and promise to take revenge on the hunter themselves, their family, their dogs, and destroy property, because: “We know where you live!” No arguments or explanations, not even scientific evidence, help, and it is impossible to convince extremist hunting opponents that hunting is as natural a part of human life and management as agriculture.

Reason – personality disorders

A while ago, an excellent explanation of the aforementioned phenomenon was provided by Aivars Skaida, a narcologist and psychiatrist, member of the occupational commission of Veselības centrs 4, and a hunter with many years of experience, in the publication “You cannot force a young person to become a hunter. They have to want to themselves! (1)″ He explains that individual animal rights activists, vegans, vegetarians, and extremists of similar leanings, just like teenagers going through puberty, crave attention. They must show that they are fighting for something. Mostly, their goal is to draw attention to themselves: “It is important that people talk about them, and it is most wonderful if someone stands up to them. Then one can fight for justice, and happiness is achieved,” adds A. Skaida.

“If such personality disorders do not pass within two years, another condition sets in – conduct disorder. And then we see those young women who throw themselves on the ground half-naked in various protests. People who nail their testicles to a stone in the town's central square and burn bank doors. It is normal, that's how it can be,” admits Aivars Skaida, adding that the public, however, calls it having a bad character. “They are not interested in anything, have no education in a specific field, they don't know history, biology, or facts. They are not interested in arguments. The main thing is to fight. As a vivid example, one can mention those who loudly announce at parties that they won't eat meat, that eating in general is a great sin, that fat is bad, that mayonnaise is bad, and that those who eat meat are eating corpses and the like. Such behaviour is counterproductive. And always, the opinion of such persons is positioned as the opinion of the whole of society. Exactly the same thing is said about hunting, and the opinion of the opposition is presented as the view of the whole of society, even though this is by no means the case. They have neither spoken to any specialist, nor has anyone discussed it with them; they don't even know the true opinion of society,” the psychiatrist explained at the time.

What can and may hunters do to defend themselves, their property, and their hunting club's property?

The main thing that must be known and accepted is that hunters can and may defend themselves, because no representatives of any minority, diet, religion, or nationality have the right to break the law and disregard social norms.

“If we are talking about damaging hunting infrastructure, we can talk about two-tier responsibility. Firstly, liability for damage to property is provided for in the Criminal Law. Secondly, action can also be taken against those who damage hunters' property in civil proceedings or within the framework of the Criminal Law. For example, in Germany, there have been cases where the legs of a hunting tower are sawn into. When climbing the tower, a hunter can fall and suffer an injury or, God forbid, die. The culprit will also have to compensate for losses, or perhaps even stand trial for an offence against a person's health, which is a slightly different responsibility from the point of view of the Criminal Law,” explains lawyer Artūrs Surmovičs.

To successfully resolve a situation and have the culprits held accountable, hunters must be able to prove that the property that was damaged belonged to a person or an organisation. When talking about comments in the online environment, threatening letters, or hate speech directed against a specific person or a hunting organisation, evidence must also be collected: screenshots, copies of documents, and other evidence that can be submitted to the police together with a complaint. However, as the lawyer explains, every situation has its nuances, therefore...
1.https://www.la.lv/psihiatrs-ar-varu-jaunieti-par-mednieku-nepadarisi-vinam-to-jagrib-pasam
Article first published in the August 2020 issue of "Medības" magazine and 18 August 2020
https://www.medibam.lv/tevi-pasu-vajag-nosaut-ka-tu-sauj-tos-dzivniecinus?fbclid=IwAR2o8QVXrEHjzsNed9E-XND13OPbOoxXwpsRRB-g69PM-kStWDBlrrvhgQM
Republished on zemeunvalsts.lv with the kind permission of editor-in-chief Linda Dombrovska. Photographs from zemeunvalsts.lv were used