Tradition und Fortschritt

01/18/2020
tradition and progress

How much technology can hunting take?

We live in a time in which technical progress changes our lives every day, simplifies them, but also makes them almost superfluous. Whether it's robots on assembly lines, fully automatic checkouts in supermarkets or our miracle device, the cell phone. Technical development does not stop at something as "traditional" as hunting.

The hunt in its most original form was the search for, stalking and killing or catching game in order to get one's own life. This has undergone a development over the millennia, which only requires more endurance from the initial qualities of courage, endurance, strength and cunning. In addition, however, the necessary knowledge about the technology has come. Starting with zeroing the gun correctly to the operation of ballistic calculators or thermal imaging devices.

We hunters have always struggled with these developments, but have always accepted them as morally correct on the grounds of fairness to the hunt. But what is fairness and why should our technical development not be part of the whole? It was first mentioned in law in the German Reich Hunting Law of 1934, only without defining it precisely. We all know that it is ethical to disturb game as little as possible, to kill it as quickly as possible and without pain, and to pay attention to the breeding and rearing times of game species when hunting. Everything else is often and gladly discussed.

So why should a riflescope with a high zoom factor, a thermal or. night vision device, the muzzle suppressor or even self-shooting weapons are not ethical? The latter was presented a few years ago at the largest arms fair in the world, the Shot Show in Las Vegas. A combination of weapon and optics, in which the target is selected via WLAN or SIM card on a touchpad and if the distance, speed and correct alignment of the target match, the shot is fired by itself. If we take the above-mentioned basic principles of hunting justice, then they are all also fulfilled here - as long as the touchpad user can still address the game.

So it's a completely different problem that we have with technical development. For most, hunting is a retreat from a highly technical world, an opportunity to decelerate and introspect. But now everything that we want to avoid on the hunt finds its way into the passion. It is up to us whether we want to allow this or not. Of course, many things make life easier - a chamois with 12x magnification is easier to target than with an old 4x telescopic sight, the pigs at the feeding station are recognized with a thermal imaging device even in bad weather and when the moon is new, and the disturbance of the environment and that Hearing of our four-legged friend, like ours own, protected by a damper.

Concerns about diseases such as tuberculosis or ASF can also be looked forward to with this technique. But when we sit at the feeding station at night in full camouflage with all our gimmicks, we have to ask ourselves whether we are still hunting or whether we have already declared war on the sows and are just the extended arm of a peasant association that wants total kills.

Originally I was asked to write an article on how the technical development of the next 25 years could influence or support hunting. This question is quickly answered: Everything is becoming faster and easier. But is that what we want? Or do we deal with it ourselves? We must be aware that our ancestors, who had to subsist on venison, were happy about every technical advance. But we still go hunting for a completely different reason. It's the love of nature, it's the way back to the origin of self-feeding, or is it a little Darwinism - "the survival of the fittest"?

Technical development will never stop at hunting. All of us but has to decide for himself how much technology he allows for his hunt. However, we all have to be aware of one thing: The stories in the evening about past hunting experiences, the trophies on the wall or pictures of the hunts will no longer have the excitement and meaning if we allow too much technology in their creation.