Hunting: Ireland Ahead Of The Pack

Across Europe, the hunting season is well and truly under way. In France, it started off with a peculiar incident where a man driving along a narrow country road was lucky not to be killed when a hunter fired 99 lead pellets into his vehicle while trying to shoot a hare. Even though France is one of the most popular European countries for hunting with more than one million people (not all licensed) participating each season, it actually does not have the highest density of hunters on the continent.

Ireland is actually ahead of the pack in that regard with 72.8 hunter per 1,000 of its inhabitants. Finland comes second with 55.6 while Cyprus is in third place with 52.3. France has 19.7 hunters per 1,000 of its inhabitants. Even though that is far behind Ireland and Finland, it is still far greater than in Germany where there are only 4.2 hunters for every 1,000 inhabitants. The figures for hunters in this infographic come from the Deutscher Jagdverband - the German Hunting Association.