I am from the UK but have recently bought a holiday home in the Alps (Skiing....my competing passion with hunting).

Does anybody here know what is possible in terms of hunting (or fly fishing too)?
Guide only?
Permits/Licenses ?
Hunt clubs?
Contacts?
Species/seasons?

The place is in a village in the Val De Bagnes in Valais in case that makes a difference.

Thanks in advance for any advice or help...

There is very little organized hunting for foreigners in Switzerland. It is essentially a question of getting invited by local hunters controlling an area.

There are 2 exceptions to this, that I'm aware of.

1) the canton of Valais (German: Vallis) sells hunting rights for certain individual animals. Most notably, this includes Alpine Ibex - I'm not sure if they offer any other species. The Ibex offered for sale are mostly old bucks, often top trophies. They are not necessarily cheap and waiting lists tend to be long, but it might be worth getting more information. The contact address has been published in here previously.

2) There is a hunting agency in Germany, Bavaria Jagdreisen, that I have seen offer hunts in Switzerland. I presume they are animals for which the agent has an agreement with the leaseholders of the particular hunting area - I'm guessing in the canton of St. Gallen.

The hunting in Switzerland is regulated by the cantons (states). Each canton has its own laws, hunting periods, qualification system, caliber requirements etc etc. It is all very Swiss. There are however two main hunting systems employed:

The mountain cantons (with the exception of St Gallen) have a license system, much like that found in the US. The holder of a valid hunting license can (in principle) hunt in the entire canton, or at least in any part thereof where the hunting is open. Mostly seasons are comparatively short (like they are in the US), but any resident of the canton with a valid hunting license can participate.

The other system - employed in the low land cantons as well as St Gallen - is a lease system. Here the huntable area of the canton is divided into leases, which are subsequently awarded to a group of hunters for a period of 8-10 years, say. Only the hunters who hold lease rights and their invites, are allowed to hunt on a particular hunting lease. In this system, hunting seasons are normally quite a bit longer than they are in the license cantons, but if you are not in a lease and are not invited, you are out of luck as far as hunting is concerned.

As mentioned above, qualifications for hunting is regulated by the cantons, and they all take this pretty seriously. So don't expect to simply buy a license and go hunting. Qualification typically takes 1-2 years and involves passing a number of exams - in the canton of Zurich it used to be 1 shooting exam and 2 theoretical and practical exams. Some (few) cantons acknowledge hunting qualifications from other countries with similar hunting systems (Germany springs to mind), but most cantons don't even accept the qualifications from a neighbouring canton.

Hope you find your way through the Swiss hunting "jungle" and manage to do some hunting. There are some pretty fantastic places to go.

Sorry, can't help you much with fishing - other than I know, that also varies from canton to canton (how could it be any different in Switzerland?).

When you do start to come to Switzrland on a regular basis, make sure to let us know, we are a small group of AR members organized under the name of "Central Zurich Rifle Nut Club", CZRNC. Although we are the other end of the country (3-4 hours by car, Switzerland is not a very large country) in the Zurich area, we arrange an outing to the range from time to time. That is usually a lot of fun.

If you have a place to live in Switzerland, you should probably be able to bring in a rifle or two and enjoy some range time. That is one good thing about the Swiss, they are still pretty liberal with respect to gun ownership.

- mike

UKHunter,

check here for local (Valais) contacts:
http://www.spw.ch/vs/

If you qualify as a resident you may be able to get a Valais hunting license. But it will take 2 years to get the license.

As a guest you may apply for guided hunts only, expensive.

Fuhrmann

quote:

Does anybody here know what is possible in terms of hunting (or fly fishing too
Guide only?

Yes (Your guide will be a local gamekeeper)

quote:

Permits/Licenses ??

Possible only after a two year long course

quote:

Contacts?

Departement de la securite et des institutions/Departement fur Sicherheit ind Institutionen
Service de la chasse et de la peche/Dienstelle fur Jagd und Fischerei
CP 478
1951 Sion-Sitten VS - CH

or

fax number: 027-6067004

Contact Narcisse Seppey (Chef du Service)

quote:

Species/seasons?

Chamois, Ibex, Red stag, Marmotte,in August and September

Blue hare, ptarmigan and "birkenhahn" in October and November

W.M.H.

gj

UK,
Looks like you got the hunting regs covered by the other guys. The fishing is relatively easy by comparison. Day passes or season passes issued by the Cantonal department.

If this works there should be a couple of photos from a trip to Glarnerland last Monday -

http://photobucket.com/albums/v469/stu_c/Fishing%20in%2...nerland%2020050912/?









- Stu