Sweden

Summary

Sweden has not allowed the bow since 1938, and the ban needs no sentence naming it. The Hunting Act lets hunters use only the weapons and hunting means the government prescribes; the Hunting Ordinance passes the decision to the environment agency, whose weapons regulations of 2023 cover firearms, their accessories and ammunition, and nothing else. The agency answers the question itself in its own guidance: does the bow become permitted with these rules? No, the matter is tabled. The crossbow is named as a prohibited means for the protected mammals and falls under the same silence for the rest.

This is also the country that came closest to a change without making it. A trial in enclosures ran from 1998 to 2002 on the agency’s own decision, and in 2018 the agency drafted a regulation that would have opened compound bows to roe deer and seven small species from 2019, under the hunter exam plus a bowhunting certificate. It postponed the decision to wait for a Finnish study, then adopted its weapons rules in 2023 without the bow. The two hunting federations asked it again in March 2026.

The legal mechanism

• Hunting Act, § 30: at hunting only the weapons and other hunting means the government prescribes may be used. § 43 (2): breaching a regulation issued under § 30 is a hunting offence, punished by a fine or up to one year in prison; § 44 makes a particularly painful hunting method an aggravating circumstance.
• Hunting Ordinance, § 10 and § 10 a: weapons and other hunting means may be used only to the extent and in the way set out in the ordinance or in regulations issued under it, and only if they meet the requirements the agency prescribes. For wild birds, bear, wolf, wolverine, lynx, otter, beaver, whales, bats and the species marked in the species-protection ordinance, the means in annex 5 are prohibited outright; for mammals that annex names the crossbow. The bow is named nowhere in the ordinance, which under § 10 is the same as a ban.
• Weapons regulations, NFS 2023:8: issued under § 10 a and § 15 of the ordinance, in force since 1 August 2023; chapter 1 § 2 limits them to firearms, accessories and ammunition for hunting, weapons for dispatching wounded game, chemical immobilisation and lead in sport-shooting ammunition. The only arrows in the text are the injection darts of chemical immobilisation. The agency’s questions and answers of February 2024 state that hunting with a bow does not become permitted with these rules and that the question is tabled pending scientific material from a Finnish study.
• The door, § 15: the agency may, by regulation or by decision in the individual case, allow hunting means other than those following from the ordinance. The enclosure trial of 1998 to 2002 ran on such a decision, and a reopening would take the same route: a regulation of the agency, not a law.
• Enclosures: a game enclosure meeting the agency’s requirements is exempt from the closed seasons for its species (§ 8), not from the rules on hunting means; the only exemption from those rules is the killing of animals caught in traps (§ 12 a).
• History: the ban dates from 1938; the federation’s FAQ notes that the preparatory works have not survived. The proposal of 2018 would have allowed compound bows only, with at least 40 joules of arrow energy, on roe deer, fox, beaver, badger, raccoon dog, raccoon, muskrat and hare, for hunters holding the Swedish hunter exam and an international bowhunting certificate, with every outing in which an arrow was released reported to the agency within 24 hours. The minister, asked in parliament in 2018 whether the ban would stay, answered that the agency decides on weapons and methods. The decision was postponed in November 2018 and again in February 2021, the SLU opinion was commissioned meanwhile, and the 2023 rules left the bow out. The petition of 2026 by Svenska Bågjägareförbundet and Svenska Jägareförbundet asks the agency to establish the bow as a permitted hunting weapon; no answer had been published on the date below.

Before you go

This page describes the Swedish texts as they stood on the date below. The decision that could change them belongs to the environment agency alone, so if you hear that the bow has been allowed, ask for the number of the new NFS regulation and the date it enters into force, and read which species and which bows it names. Until then, Swedish bowhunters hunt abroad, and so must you. The final check is yours.