Netherlands

Summary

Hunting in the Netherlands may use only the means the Environmental Activities Decree lists: guns, dogs other than sighthounds, bred goshawks and peregrine falcons, duck decoys, decoy ducks and pigeons, ferrets, purse nets and screens. The bow is not on the list, and the same article forbids hunting at all while any other means able to catch or kill animals is in the field. The government’s information point names bow and arrow among the means that are not allowed. Breaking the rule is an economic offence.

That national list sits inside a wider one. Under the Benelux Convention, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg may hunt only with the means their joint Committee of Ministers designates. Since Decision M (2025) 1 of 15 July 2025 that list includes bows and hunting arrows for all three countries; before, it did so for Wallonia alone. The list is a maximum, not an obligation: each government may keep a shorter one, and the explanatory memorandum says the bow may now be allowed elsewhere in the Benelux as far as the government concerned considers it desirable. The Dutch decree, in its text in force since 11 July 2026, has not added it.

The legal mechanism

• Environment and Planning Act: art. 4.3 (1) k and l require national rules on hunting and on the means used to catch or kill animals; art. 4.31 (2) b says those rules determine which means may be used at hunting, and art. 4.20 a that they implement the Benelux rules. Art. 8.3 (4) allows hunting on five species only: pheasant, hare, mallard, wood pigeon and rabbit. Deer and wild boar are not game in the Dutch sense; they are killed under culling and damage-control permits.
• Environmental Activities Decree, art. 11.71: (1) no other means may be used at hunting than guns; dogs, except sighthounds; goshawks or peregrine falcons shown to be bred in captivity; duck decoys; decoy ducks or pigeons that are not blinded or maimed; ferrets; purse nets; screens. (2) Hunting may not take place while other means suitable for catching or killing animals are in the field. (3) Anyone in the field with means allowed for hunting, or with other means that can be used to hunt, is presumed to be hunting unless the contrary appears.
• Economic Offences Act: breaches of the rules made under art. 4.3 (1) k of the Environment and Planning Act are economic offences (art. 1a 3°) of the misdemeanour class (art. 2 (4)), punishable by detention of up to six months, community service or a fourth-category fine (art. 6 (1) 5°).
• Weapons and Ammunition Act: arrows and arrowheads meant to be shot from a bow and fitted with cutting parts with the evident intention of causing serious injury are category I weapons (art. 2 (1), category I 5°). Art. 13 forbids making, possessing, carrying, transporting, bringing in or taking out a category I weapon; the minister may grant exemptions only for the armed forces, the police and other public services, their training, and transit. Art. 55 (1) sets up to nine months in prison or a fourth-category fine. The act does not name the bow itself.
• Culling permits: for bird species the Environmental Quality Decree, art. 8.74p, lists the means a permit may prescribe, and the bow is not among them. For deer, wild boar and other mammals, art. 8.74r only says the permit prescribes the means and, where it is granted against serious damage, only means that avoid or limit harm to the animals’ welfare. No text read names the bow there; see the open questions.
• Benelux Convention, art. 4 (2) and (4) a) 1°: at hunting only the weapons, ammunition and other means designated by the Committee of Ministers may be used. Decision M (2025) 1: art. 1 (1) d) defines bows as hand bows drawn and held at full draw by the shooter’s own strength; art. 2 f) and g) allow bows and, for big game, arrows with broadheads at least 25 mm wide with at least two cutting edges, fixed or mechanical when open; for small game and birds on the ground the same heads or non-cutting impact heads; for birds in flight only non-cutting impact heads on arrows with enlarged fletching of at least 6 cm. Art. 3 prohibits field and practice points, poisoned and explosive arrows, and every means not listed in art. 2. Art. 4 lets each government be more restrictive. The explanatory memorandum adds that the bow had been allowed for Wallonia since Decision M (98) 4, that crossbows do not count as bows, that hunting with the bow is only for holders of a valid hunting licence, and that a country which chooses to allow a new means must refer to the decision when it does.
• History: the list has kept the same shape through three laws: the Flora and Fauna Act of 2002, art. 50, the Nature Conservation Act of 2017, art. 3.21, and the present decree. In the answer of 2013 to parliamentary questions, after a fallow deer was found in Friesland with an arrow in its head, the minister of justice wrote that using the bow at hunting was not allowed under the Flora and Fauna Act, that the means was unsuitable because the risk of unnecessary suffering was too great, and that there were no plans to legalise bowhunting. The same answer records that the Dutch bowhunters’ association had argued for it on its website and in a letter of 27 September 2011, but had never put it to the minister formally.
• The crossbow is not a bow under Decision M (2025) 1 and is not on the Dutch list.

Open questions

• Culling permits for mammals. The Environmental Quality Decree closes the list of means for birds but not for deer and wild boar. Whether a province could prescribe a bow in such a permit is not answered by any text read, and no permit that does so was found. The Weapons and Ammunition Act would still apply to the broadheads.
• After the 2025 decision. No Dutch government document mentioning the bow was found after July 2025, and the decree’s text of 11 July 2026 keeps the old list. The EBF press release of August 2025 announced the decision as a recognition of bowhunting across the Benelux; the decision itself leaves the choice to each government.

Before you go

This page describes the Dutch texts as they stood on the date below. If the Netherlands takes up the Benelux option, the change will appear as an amendment to art. 11.71 of the Environmental Activities Decree, published in the Staatsblad with a reference to Decision M (2025) 1; if you hear that the bow is allowed, ask for that amendment and its date. Until then, hunting with a bow in the Netherlands is an offence, and carrying cutting broadheads into the country may be one under the Weapons and Ammunition Act. The final check is yours.