Patrick I have a buddy that lives in the UK where it is also illegal to bowhunt. Here was his response to my questions about it being illegal there.

It was banned over fears about poaching, in a small, densley populated country like the UK, hunting with a gun is much more conspicuious that hunting with a bow.

It won’t be legalised becuase of the animal rights crowd, and people unwilling tp accept meat was once an animal.

It’s not actually banned, bows are just not on the approved hunting tools list.

Now I don’t know if this is the case in Germany, but I would suspect it to be.

Patrick — where do you come up with these far-flung questions!?:roll: Seriously, I for one greatly appreciate your egoless curiosity … you make us all think. Cottonwood’s friend pretty much nails it in my view. But to add some background, remember that for centuries throughout Europe, big game and hunting were reserved to the royalty and gentry. This was the time and origin of the Robin Hood myths. Poaching was a high crime that could cost you your wife and daughters, even a hand chopped off or death. It is said that a major contributor to the French Revolution was the peasantry’s displeasure with this “hunting for the rich and privileged only” situation. (The fact that once the peasants took control the basically wiped out all wildlife in short order … well that’s another story!) Thus, the preferred conspicuity of firearms hunting as opposed to the potential secrecy of bowhunting has strong historical precedent in Europa. Not only Germany but France and Switizerland also, and probly others I don’t know about. I’ll ask my Swiss/French-speaking hunting buddy Alex to wade in here, as he was born and raised in the French alps and know all about it. What would be required to get bowhunting permitted in these Old World cultures is for a substantial portion of the rich and privileged to take it up and raise hell to have it allowed. Like so many topics this is the tip of an iceberg name of “the North American democratic hunting model vs. the European elite hunting model. And I guarantee you Patrick the Curious, if we continue overpopulating our land and continue destroying our best public lands wildlife habitat, eventually the European model is all we’ll have left. That is, those who can afford it will pay bigtime to hunt on private land. The rest of us peasants will be poop out of luck. dp

I can only speak for Switzerland and France. France was the FIRST country to ALLOW Bowhunting in Europe. I mean, they fought like hell! and their example is spilling over to other countries that might, I say might, allow it one day. At least, they see how well it flourished in France.
sooo, that takes care of France!
As far as Switzerland ( which has the same philosophy about a bow & arrow as Germany), there is nothing privileged or royal about hunting. It is totally democratic ( Switzerland was the first democracy in the world, in year 1291! ) most hunters are farmers and blue collar folks. Luckily, There is very little private land in Switzerland. Most forest,prairies and mountains grazing fields are owned and managed by each neighboring town and the town’s government control who farm, graze and hunt on it. The main problem about not allowing Bowhunting is this:
First, the arrow going thru an animal is too graphic, too feodal, primitive, too up close and personal for comfort, in the eyes of lots of people in Europe. Also, they don’t see it as a precise weapon hitting its mark. They truly, sincerely believe that only a scoped rifle from far away is adequate and humane for hunting. Switzerland and Germany are too rigid in their fundamental idea of what hunting should be, ie. strictly a conservation tool, with no fun allowed, because their every move is watched and criticized by a very powerful lobby opposed to hunting ( lets not forget Dr Schweitzer was Swiss) Ok, I’m tired of typing. I hope I made a little sense to you

This is a public apology to anyone who saw my previous post if you didn’t please disregard. I made fun of Germans because I am of German descent and 90% of the people I know are German. I meant it more in the spirit of making fun of myself than anyone else so if I offended you my sincere apologies. As we Germans say around here “you can always tell a German but you can’t tell him anything”. I will banish myself from the site untill I can behave. Shoot staight you are a great group.

I think nobody knows exactly, but one reason could be,
after second world war was a lot of poaching with bow and
especially crossbow.
When in the year 1949 the Federal Republic of Germany
was established they also made a new gamelaw.
In this law you can read, hunting with bolts and arrows for
all deers, all boars and all sheep is illegal.

Patrick, you may find this interesting if long winded, see below.

Cootonwood, I have been told that here in the UK it was an oversight that bows were not included/approved, it is quite legal to kill rabbits etc. with an air rifle but not a 50# bow. As for poaching I’m not sure ,dogs are the most popular method followed by snares and the rifles bows and crossbows are used rarely.

M, I’ve spent a lot of time with German’s doing business and socially most have a good sense of humour (or non at all), you would have to go a long way to offend them, however you could always really upset them by saying they know nothing about beer and schnapps is only good for degreasing, not that I would.

BOW HUNTING TIME LINE EUROPE AND WORLDWIDE
• 1936 Wisconsin opens the fist US bow hunting season
• 1945 Yugoslavian republic Serbia regulates hunting with bow and arrow.
• 1967 Denmark issues personal permits to bow hunters
• 1986 Portugal legalizes hunting with bow and arrow
• 1989 Zimbabwe made it possible to hunt with bow and arrow on special permit
• 1992 Lithuania legalises all hunting with bow and arrow
• 1993 Finland formalises a long period of unregulated bow hunting
• 1993 Hungary legalises all hunting with bow and arrow.
• 1995 France regulates hunting with bow and arrow
• 1995 Botswana legalises bow hunting for plains game
• 1997 Spain makes hunting with bow and arrow possible
• 1998 Namibia legalises bow hunting for plains game
• 1999 Zimbabwe changes the regulation for bow hunting
• 1999 Denmark regulates bow hunting for roedeer and lesser game
• 2003 France restructures the regulations for bow hunting allowing shorter bows and release aid.
• 2003 Finland changes the regulation so roedeer and beaver can be hunted with bow and arrow
• 2005 Tanzania legalises hunting with bow and arrow
• 2006 Aland legalises hunting with bow
• 2007 South Africa makes new regulation for hunting with bow and arrow
• 2008 Denmark makes the formal change in the law to legalise Bow hunting
• 2008 France eases regulations for foreign bow hunters as well as young bow hunters
• 2009 Bulgaria legalizes all hunting with bow and arrow

ha ha, its illegal to bow hunt in Germany??? I should tell my German bowhunting buddy over there, lol. Just kidding, like someone said above they cant hunt deer, but basically anything else is fair game, he hunts pheasants, hare, boars! I think it is odd that in the land of robin hood(not necessarily Germany, but you guys know what I mean) they can’t hunt with a bow.

Chris — haven’t seen you here lately with the normal regularity. You been gone hunting I hope.

Pothunter — thanks for the great historical calendar! It’s always amazing how much folks here know about a wide variety of issues aside from archery and hunting . I used to think I knew a lot about bowhunting, if nothing else, but right now the turkeys are proving me wrong (again). dave 😛

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowhunting
An interesting link on European Bowhunting.:)

I had the great pleasure of shooting on Saturday with four guys that are preparing to visit your side of the pond in September, three have visited previously and taken pigs, black bear and whitetail but this year they are after elk, I would so like to join them but just can’t get away from work.

The upside of being ‘outlawed’ you get to travel.

Mark.