with this post i'm concerned with rifles and combination gun hunting only.

do you hunt large forestbirds such as our black grouse and capercaille(2-5kg)?
personly i'm very fond of tophunting(when the snow comes, the birds tend to sit in the top of the trees, and we then shoot them with rifles/kombi's)

is varmint hunting common?

how do you guys hunt roe deer?(driven, stalking etc).

any other species commonly hunted in your country?

and what kind of guns and cartridges do you use for roe and downwards?



it was many questions, but i hope you can take time to answer at least some of them.
thanks.
i would love to visit your country some day, and maybe even a hunt too.

Neither the black grouse nor the capercaille is huntable in Germany. There are populations, but they are too thin on the ground. In both Austria and Switzerland, black grouse is hunted. In Austria it is primarily a spring (rut - if birds rut?) hunt, in Switzerland they are hunted in autumn. The capercaile is hunted in a few places in Austria, where the population will handle the off-take. This is also a spring hunt.

Calibers used are mostly small rifle calibers - the .22 Hornet being about ideal, the .222 Rem acceptable. In Switzerland, big game rounds with FMJ bullets are commonly used. Shot is also used, although it can be problematic in terms of loosing animals. Shot does have the advantage of causing less damage if you want the bird mounted.

Roe is primarily hunted from stands (rifle - from .222 Rem and up). In autumn and winter, (female) roe is also hunted on drives. In Germany roe is only shot with rifles, in Switzerland shot is used on the driven hunts.

Guns for small game (foxes etc) are typically shotguns or small caliber rifles - .222 Rem, 5.6x50(R), 5.6x52(R), .243 Win etc.

- mike

Most common big game is roe deer, about 1 million shot each year nation wide. Next place is wild boar, in good years around 400.000 if I remember well. All other big game animals like chamois, red deer, moufflon, fallow are difficult to get by and thus, expensive.

Our varmint hunting is basically red fox, since they started vaccination against rabies their population multiplied by 10, therefore small game is basically extinct in most areas.

Since there's always a chance in most areas for a wild pig to show up, most hunters carry a bigger caliber like 7x64 mm, 8 mm or 30/06 (currently most popular), drillimgs very common because a fox might always shop up, too.

Roe deer mostly from teh hochsitz but also stalking, in winter females and fawns are hunted on driven hunts, too.