The Heavy Game of Modern Times

Ready, aim, shoot, kill! For fun, necessity, or the urgent natural selection of game. It doesn’t matter who dies: a bird, a rabbit, a deer, a stag, a wild boar, a bear, a fox..

 Hunting is back in fashion, just as it was in the Middle Ages when prehistoric man chased beasts with a club to feed on their meat or in the 19th century when the Hunting Law was first introduced in Croatia. It was allowed only for the nobility, and today anyone hunts whenever and however they can, although hunting is regulated by law. Many ‘big shots-tycoons’ enjoy hundreds of thousands of meters of their own hunting grounds; entrepreneurs, politicians, generals, former high-ranking spies… often hunt in their free time on estates in the most beautiful parts of our Beautiful Homeland. 

Hunting is increasingly becoming a tourist attraction, so armed groups of foreign tourist-hunters cruise through Croatia, paying a small amount for a unique experience in Croatian forests and mountains. If you think that only men are ruthless when it comes to killing game and that a surprisingly benevolent bear’s gaze or a frightened rabbit cannot touch their hearts, you are mistaken. We do not know how the Friends of Animals association overlooked female hunters, Croatian and foreign girls, who disrupt the perfect natural harmony by pulling the trigger of hunting weapons. However, these are registered members of hunting societies who are educated about wildlife protection and respect the hunting season and, we hope, the allowed quotas for hunting, but poachers also love hunting. It was understood long ago in the Middle Ages that order needed to be introduced into this type of human entertainment when the nobility viewed hunting as a relaxing prelude to military campaigns. After hunting, and for centuries afterward, banquets were organized where dishes made from freshly killed game were tasted. To protect wildlife, kings in the Middle Ages began declaring all forests royal hunting grounds and introduced hunting seasons. However, the king could hunt whenever he wanted, and he would gift the surplus game to the nobility. 

In Croatia, for example, the bear hunting season is currently underway. This refers to the indigenous species of the European brown bear, which has been nearly exterminated in Western Europe. These bears live in Gorski Kotar and Lika, then in the Carpathians in Eastern Europe and in Slovenia, where they have their last refuge. It could be said that the brown bear is a premium product of Croatian biodiversity and is protected as such, but its greatest enemy is solely man. Every year, a certain number of these unusual creatures are killed, and by mid-year, in the first bear hunting season that lasts during spring, 64 have been killed. It is a bit harder for poachers to hide a bear weighing up to 300 kilograms, but it is easy to cover the trail of wild boars, foxes, and smaller game. 

The media often remind us that hunting as a social activity is interesting. This was evident about ten years ago when an interview with the daughter-in-law of one of the most famous Croatian families, who would have been awarded the highest possible title if noble titles were still distributed in Beautiful Croatia, was published in a political weekly (which is still in circulation). Among other things, the fragile former beauty queen boasted about catching a wild boar weighing 120 kilograms. What can one say except that the commoner perfectly fit into her husband’s family. Unlike her, Diana, Princess of Wales, of noble descent, was not so lucky. While Diana was still engaged to Prince Charles, her future mother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth, gifted her hunting dogs. However, the young, kind-hearted, and naive Diana refused the gift, explaining that she was horrified by hunting and killing animals.
This made it clear what she thought of the queen, the kingdom, tradition, and everything else into which they had unwittingly thrust her – and she stepped into the abyss, but the journey to the bottom took time. The case of Princess Diana could confirm the Latin saying ‘Nomen est omen’, the name determines what we are, as in mythology Diana is the goddess of hunting. 

Princess Diana, who despised weapons and hunting, ended up as the prey of paparazzi, who followed the car in which she was riding with her lover or someone much more powerful, in a traffic accident in 1997 in the center of Paris, in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel. Saying goodbye to his sister, Count Charles Spencer said over Diana’s coffin that she was the greatest prey of modern times. 
Returning to the Croatian reality and the history of hunting, there are indeed interesting details in the literature, especially regarding the nobility. The tragic story of the death of Croatian Ban Nikola Zrinski, who was severely injured by a wild boar while hunting in 1664, is one such detail. What a disgrace!? One of the descendants of the famous warrior Nikola Šubić Zrinski, ‘the European Leonidas’, could not withstand the wild boar and bled to death from the wounds inflicted on his head and neck by the enraged boar. Ban Zrinski is probably not the only nobleman who perished while hunting, as hunting festivities abounded in European and Croatian castles. Exhibits of killed animals testify to that time: in Croatia, the eastern tower of Trakošćan Castle was known for them, an exhibition space for the hunting trophies of the Drašković noble family. 

Hunting in Croatia, as today, was favored among the social and political elite at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. According to the Hunting Law enacted in 1893, the right to hunt was held by landowners whose forest was larger than 400 cadastral acres. However, Croats enjoyed hunting centuries before the Hunting Law was enacted, as evidenced by the depiction of hunting on the portal of the Trogir Cathedral, created by master Radovan nearly a thousand years ago. Although the first Croatian hunting law is considered to be the one enacted by Emperor Joseph II in 1786, published in Croatian in 1815 and valid until 1935, the right to hunt in medieval Croatia was also addressed by the Poljički Code and the Novigrad Statute. Peasants were always in a disadvantaged position, and the Croatian-Hungarian King Vladislav II ordered in 1504 that they could not hunt because their job was to work the land. If a peasant killed a wild animal, he paid a fine of three forints. Church dignitaries also enjoyed hunting; Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer was an avid hunter and organizer of large hunts in the area of the Đakovo Archdiocese. He brought game to Croatia that was not found in these areas.

Whatever it was in the past, today hunting is one of the potential tourist branches in Croatia, but ‘modern peasants’ do not have access to this type of entertainment for practical reasons because it is expensive. That hunting is a lasting potential is confirmed by the fact that the Hunting Herald is still published, unlike many defunct newspapers, with its first issue published 130 years ago, making it the third oldest hunting newspaper in Europe. It is published by the Croatian Hunting Federation, which has its own library, hunting museum…