The document summarizes anti-hunting movements in Germany, Britain, and France. In Britain, anti-hunting protests have been highly organized and successful, mobilizing significant public support and passing legislation to restrict hunting. In France, the hunting lobby has formed a political party that opposes restrictions, though hunting regulations are tightening. In contrast, Germany's anti-hunting movement has failed to gain traction due to internal divisions, a powerful pro-hunting lobby, and support for hunting traditions.

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Over a frozen field Thirty-five east of Dortmund, individuals Germany's elite-government officials,
business leaders, and royalty--assemble inside the medieval city of Arnsberg for a one thousand year
ritual: the Arnsberg Treibjagd (driven hunt). Like live-sized Hummelfiguren, adorned in Bavarian-
style Loden coats, expensive Zeiss binoculars, priceless weapons, and associated with the German
hunter's closest friend, the Dackel, they ready themselves for that ancient and hair-raising wail from
the hunting horns--the hunt is on! The playing using this medieval scene is soon interrupted,
however, by an unlikely group of fast-moving, jean-clad "hunting saboteurs" who, wielding signs that
read "Hunting is Murder," proceed to barricade hunting areas as well as to risk limb and life before
high-powered rifles. The scene plays itself outside in the typical way: heated words are exchanged,
the authorities arrive, and the hunt is cancelled. During the last few years, this scenario has become
more common in German forests. Initially in the deeply rooted existence, German hunting is under
siege from the anti-hunting movement, begging the question of whether this age-old hunting culture
will survive from the new century.
However, in spite of the publicity-worthy tactics described above, Germany's anti-hunting movement
has neglected to mobilize significant public support, in comparison using their counterparts in Great
Britain and France. With this paper, I debate that the failure in the German anti-hunting movement
may be traced to 2 broad sources. First, the movement is affected with deep ideological rifts within
its own ranks which is impeded by significant organizational difficulties. Second, these problems are
exacerbated by way of a deeply entrenched, well-organized, and influential hunting lobby, which
advantages of a pervasive kind of romanticism that supports the continuation of the Jagdmythos, or
hunting myth.

2. Anti-Hunting Movements in Great France and Britain
Whatever happens in Great Britain this coming year, one important thing is certain: hunting there
will never be a similar. The closing several years of the twentieth century witnessed the most
efficient and concentrated assault on hunting in Britain's history. All across the country, through the
Highlands of Scotland to the lush fields of Kent, hunters, game-keepers, and all those remotely
related to so-called blood sports are facing irreversible changes to, or even the entire extinction of,
their lifestyle.
A more in-depth inspection of Britain's anti-hunting sniper scope movement reveals several factors
that explain these developments. One could start out with British literature. British authors have
been found an array of anti-hunting material, the favourite among these Sir Thomas More's
sixteenth-century work Utopia, which laid the intellectual basis for anti-hunting campaigns. Class-
consciousness also fused using the urban-rural divide to play an essential role. The presence of a
very small "hunting aristocracy," particularly those linked to fox hunting, provided an easy target for
anyone set on eliminating among the last great bastions of elitism and rural traditionalism. In
addition to these shifts in British tradition and society, noisy, well-organized and orchestrated anti-
hunting protests--and also significant underlying support through the public, the Labour Party, and
also the Blair government--have generated the creation of numerous parliamentary measures to
radically reduce hunting rights across the nation. Major legislation is pending inside your home of
Commons, that, if passed, would seriously cripple hunting, by February 2001. Introduced on March
2 and April13 and 2000, the property Affairs Select Committee Report of your home of Commons
aimed to reduce foxhunting with hounds and "hare coursing" in Scotland, make shotguns tough to
acquire, ban sport shooting by youths younger than fourteen, and then make airguns subjected to
strict licensing laws. In Scotland, estimates advise that 300 gamekeepers could lose their jobs

3. immediately. The shotgun industry, one among Britain's oldest and the majority of prestigious, is
definitely suffering under the 29 percent decline in shotgun ownership since 1988. Preventing
youths from shooting, even under supervised conditions in gun clubs, would place approximately one
thousand jobs in the business in immediate jeopardy and effectively eliminate Britain's Olympic
shooting team.(1) By far the most symbolic and controversial component of this new parliamentary
package--the provision forbidding fox hunting with hounds--passed the House of Commons by a vote
of 387 to 174 during early January 2001. Many people from the hunting community assume that this
measure would be the catalyst to an irreversible decline in British hunting. The hunting community
is closely watching the actions in the more conservative House of Lords, which will most certainly
delay voting on the measure. Hunters hope to stay off one final ban on fox hunting before the next
general election.
In the local level, stringent gun control laws along with a very tough police and licensing monitoring
system have led some hunters to abandon the sport as an alternative to endure police inspections
and bureaucratic formalities. As well, anti-hunting groups have terrorized the homes and businesses
of hunters and anyone remotely connected to the sport. About the evening of September3 and 2000,
for instance, roughly fifty anti-hunting protestors raided the business and home of any Surrey kennel
owner whose dogs can be used as fox hunting. The attack was so fierce that plate glass windows
were broken as well as the employees and family of your kennel "huddled one of the hounds for
protection."(2)
In order to fend off anti-hunting movements just across the Rhine, French hunters have got a far
more aggressive approach. With 1.3 million votes and 6.8 percent from the total vote cast in the
most up-to-date European parliamentary elections, the Hunting, Fishing, Traditions and Nature
Party peche and Chasse, nature et traditions, or CPNT) has sent a shock wave through French

4. politics. From the town of Abbeville, French hunters took part in a 12,000-strong march to protest
anti-hunting measures in parliament and then in Brussels. Among other issues, French hunters are
protesting a 1979 European Parliament law that closes the annual hunting season in member states
on January 31. French hunters, seeking to take advantage of the migratory bird season, wish to hunt
until February 28. With 1.48 million hunters, France's hunting community is prepared to
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/sniper/ fight anti-hunting groups, the French government, and the
EU. Should the CPNT as well as its supporters proceed to the field and ignore EU law, french
government will likely be fined $105,000 for each day that this law is ignored. The first choice in the
CPNT, Jean Saint-Josse, declared to politicians, "Anybody who is the opposite of us is sentenced to
political death."(3) Tough talk aside, French hunters are slowly losing the battle. Together with the
support of any coalition of Green and socialists Party members, french parliament recently passed
legislation that will require much stricter training laws, reduce the practice of night hunting, shorten
the migratory bird hunting season, and, above all, abolish hunting on Wednesdays, which is declared
a "no hunt day."(4)
The campaign to eliminate hunting in Germany, in comparison, has yet to satisfy with any such
success. It is tiny, poorly funded, disorganized, and restricted to scattered acts of "ecosabotage," like
sawing down deer stands, heckling hunting exhibitions, and disturbing driven hunts. This failure is
hard to explain, ever since the casual observer of Germany could reasonably conclude how the
country's anti-hunting movement ought to be among Europe's most successful. Numerous factors
would support this premise.