A dispute broke out over small game hunting competitions. We went to the games to find out why the parties received threats and why they couldn’t seem to find common ground.
Here we are waiting for it.
There is not enough snow, it is not easy to go on the trail. In the afternoon, the American foxhound Smirre can’t bear to sniff the same morning tracks anymore, and Tanskanen also wants to go to the sauna.
Danskanen’s team has caught one fox. Tanskanen himself has not yet made it further than the traces in the competition.
– As you can see, this is not about killing for us, Tanskanen says.
In Suomussalmi, small game hunting SM team competitions were organized last weekend, which many people called killing competitions on social media.
We went to the exciting hunting competitions to see what it’s really all about.
Ruhtinansalmi village in Suomussalmi has 80 permanent residents.
A lot has happened since then. More than 30,000 people have signed the hunting competition. The group’s review is aimed above all at the competitive hunting of native small carnivores.
Many parties are of the opinion that killing and competitions do not belong together, and killing should not be entertained.
Now Heikkinen also admits that the word has given the wrong impression.
The teams have started their work in the morning. The teams gathered for the salmon soup say that they are not in Suomussalmi with a competitive spirit, but to enjoy the hobby with friends. Of course, it would be nice to get the catch too.
Some of the teams approach the media with reservations. Hunters are annoyed that people who don’t know the species have begun to criticize it. You can’t even judge fitness sports as pretending, if you don’t know the sport, compare one.
Jarmo Heikkinen says he has received a dozen threats and says the scoring was unreasonable. The police have received a criminal complaint about them, and the matter is under preliminary investigation.
Also a philosopher, Aaltola, who criticized the competition on Twitter, says that he has received a lot of messages – both relevant and irrelevant. Aaltola says that she is not afraid of small things, and some of the messages remain in the filters so that she does not see them.
In many messages, however, he is barked at, and talk about animals in a sadistic tone.
Animal protectors for the animal, hunters for the game stock
Animal protectors think from the point of view of the individual animal: the life of an individual animal should not be affected. Hunters, on the other hand, think about game populations: if there is enough animal species in the area, it can be hunted, game planner Tapio Kangas explains the conflict between animal conservationists and hunters.
– Alien species in particular cause species depletion for birds and other species.
Alien species have spread to Finland with humans and have crossed their natural distribution areas. Harmful alien species means a species that has been found to threaten biodiversity. These include mink and raccoon, for example.
The organizer of the event, Heikkinen, emphasized earlier in Ilta-Sanomie’s story that hunting raccoons is important for nature conservation, as they threaten biodiversity.
There are five animals on the list at the Suomussalmi Games: raccoon and mink, as well as the native badger, marten and fox. For each animal killed, you get one point.
A disputed badger
However, not a single raccoon was killed in this year’s race, let alone a badger. Based on the results, it was mostly a fox hunting event.
According to the organizer of the competition, one year the teams caught a total of two animals. The maximum number of catches has been 80.
The fact that the badger was on the list of animals to catch this year caused a lot of criticism on social media.
Badgers have been shot in other competitions, for example in Pirkanmaa, 93 badgers were killed in Häijä small game competitions in 2020.
There are hardly any badgers at the altitude of Suomussalmi, says Heikkinen. He says that the badger was left on the list when the catch list was copied from other games, but they have never been caught at the Suomussalmi Games.
And it won’t be asked next year either, because now Heikkinen plans to remove the badger from the list.
Elisa Aaltola criticizes a lot on social media that badgers are hunted in the games. He says he did so because badgers have been killed in similar competitions.
– I myself brought up that the badger was also on the list of the Suomussalmi competition, and you would have gotten a point for killing it as well. In the end, the dachshund issue was just one of the many problems of the Games.
Heikkinen says that the word competition will also be omitted next year.
– It has upset people’s minds and certainly gave a wrong image of this activity.
Misconceptions can create uproar, but according to the animal protector, part of the reason lies with the hunters themselves.
– Many hunters have themselves given weapons against themselves by filming and publishing, for example, videos in which a dog is unleashed on a raccoon. I’ve seen them myself.
The law says that the animal must be killed as quickly as possible and without causing unnecessary pain. Matches between a dog and \”prey\” are therefore also prohibited in the eyes of the law.
– There is no way to defend that. Even though it is an alien species, the animal must be respected like any other game.
Even animal protectors make excesses
Mootkavaara is a hunter himself. He is upset that hunting as a sport suffers from such commotions and videos.
– The hunting scene is starting to become cleaner, but among hunters – as in other communities – there are people who do not respect the laws or care about animals.
Muotkavaara sees that excesses are also being made in animal protection. Animals are sometimes kept alive for no reason, even if the only ethical thing to do is to end it.
– In both circles, it’s very difficult to see inside your own community, you can’t see what’s wrong there.
Muotkavaara hopes that animal welfare and hunters would cooperate more. Then, for example, raccoons that went into wild cat traps used by animal protection could be killed quickly – since they cannot be released back into the wild as harmful alien species.
– Lynching and scoring do not move things forward. This doesn’t do any good – neither for animal protectors nor for hunters, Muotkavaara sighs.
Even hunters disagree on ethical issues
More than 300,000 Finns have a hunting license. \”Hunters\” are therefore not a uniform group that all have the same idea of \u200b\u200bwhat ethical hunting is.
Not everyone accepts the word competition. Catching methods are also discussed within the species, says Tiia Muotkavaara.
In cave hunting, the hunting dog chases the animal out of, for example, a cave. It divides opinion, because cave hunting can be dangerous for the dog, but the dog can also catch the prey animal and thus cause unnecessary suffering.
Tapio Kangas of Riistakeskus, on the other hand, sees that cave hunting is widely seen as important, because without it, for example, the raccoon dog population could not be kept in the wild.
– The basic starting point is that hunting is based on the Hunting Act and everything that is allowed there has been considered in society. The Hunting Act gives minimum conditions for ethics, but also lives with the times. Hunters also think a lot about how the ethics of their own activities are realized in hunting.
Muotkavaara hopes that ethics could be discussed more openly. For example, could dogs be bred so that they don’t go to caves at all? Could the part of ethics included in the hunting card be wider?
According to Heikkinen, small game is treated with respect in Suomussalmi: the finishing shots are done carefully and immediately, the game animal is not bullied and the prey animals end up in the hands of local artisans.
The fox that was shot in the morning more than 20 kilometers southeast of the village house has been placed on a coniferous bed. That’s also part of respect, not throwing the carcass around.
– It is interesting to follow, get to know and chase that sport. To me, that’s respect for the game. Taking positions, says Arsi Tanskanen.
The event attracts new enthusiasts to the sport
A marten escapes from a cave in the dark forest of Suumussalmi. The team of men in their twenties and thirties has been asking for it since morning. Eight of the friends have come to the forests of Suomussalmi from Kinnula in central Finland.
They are the youngest team at the Games. Young people are not exactly a rarity in hunting, but older generations have been active hunters, and now they are being left out of hunting.
According to Jarmo Heikkinen, that is one of the reasons why the games have been organized; to get new people into the sport.
Uproar and criticism don’t help that, say the men who hunted the marten and hope that people would come to the forest themselves to see what it’s all about. For them, hunting is something to do together in nature.
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