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Education · 19 September 2026

What the codes say

The ethics of bowhunting is invoked often and written down rarely. We looked for the texts that put it on paper, in Europe and across the ocean, and read them one by one: what they ask, where they agree and where they all fall silent.

A sentence on page five

In January 2026 Denmark rewrote its rules of hunting ethics. They were adopted by the council that manages game, carry a foreword signed by the minister and replace every earlier version. Eighteen pages on how a hunter behaves: towards game, towards the land, towards the other people out in nature.

On page five, the Danish hunting ethics rules say of themselves that they do not cover every conceivable form of hunting and contain no separate provisions for hunting with the bow or with falcons.

In Hungary, the Hungarian chamber code runs to fourteen pages and is binding on the hunters who are members of the chamber. Archers appear in it once, in a parenthesis about clothing: camouflage is not suitable for hunting, “except for archers”. Everything else is written for the gun.

These are two countries where the bow is lawful and examined — Denmark and Hungary — and two serious codes of ethics, one of them required by law. Neither says a word about how one shoots an animal with a bow.

So where is the ethics of bowhunting written down? We looked for it, downloaded what we found and read every text. This article says what is in them, not what ought to be.

Who has written something

The list is short, and the texts on it are not all of one kind.

France has a charter. The French federation’s charter of values has a handful of short headings and not a single figure, and opens by saying that modern bowhunting is a recent practice, which the federation invites its members to think through and to codify.

Denmark has two texts from its bowhunters’ association, neither adopted as a code. One is the Danish association’s recommendations page, with distances and angles. The other is an article from 2023, signed by a board member and prompted by an internet post showing a roe deer shot in the neck: the Danish association’s article is a ten-line list of what an ethically correct shot at a roe deer means.

Finland has the Finnish federation’s principles — a page that ends by noting that the text is a translation, from a source named only by an abbreviation we have not been able to resolve.

The European federation has no code. It has a presentation page, a page of values and a list of frequently asked questions, with a few sentences on this subject. One of them, on the European federation’s home page, is almost word for word the Finnish preamble: in choosing the bow, the hunter consciously decides to leave behind some of the advantages of modern technology and, as a consequence, has to select, maintain and master equipment suited to the game. We do not know who took it from whom.

Two texts come from across the ocean. The Pope and Young rules, from the American club that records trophies taken with the bow, define fair chase as the ethical, sportsmanlike and lawful pursuit of free-ranging game in a way that gives the hunter no unfair advantage, and list what falls outside it:

The Finnish list closely resembles this one. The second text is the American education standard for bowhunters, the most detailed of them all, written as learning objectives.

That is what we found. FACE, the European hunters’ federation, has a one-page text on the bow — the FACE position of 2020 — which is not a code of conduct. At the CIC we found nothing on the pages we checked. For Italy, Spain and Portugal we found no code from any bowhunters’ association — which means we did not find one, not that none exists.

Along a hunt

Set side by side, the texts can be read in the order in which a hunt unfolds.

Before

Here they all agree, those written for the bow and those written for the gun.

The French charter asks bowhunters to maintain and tune their equipment, to keep the blades of their broadheads clean and sharp, to practise regularly, to seek to improve and to know their limits as a hunter, an archer and a tracker, so that neither the game nor their hunting companions suffer for it. The Finnish principles ask the same in half a sentence. The American standard defines a “zone of shooting confidence” — the range at which you are sure of a vital hit — and says it rests, among other things, on one’s ethics, “such as continual shooting practice”.

The general codes say the same. The European Charter on Hunting and Biodiversity, a non-binding text adopted in 2007 under the Bern Convention, asks hunters to train regularly to maintain their proficiency. The Boone and Crockett statement asks for the skills needed to make the kill as certain and as quick as possible. The Danish rules have a sentence for it that sticks: experiment only on the range, never when hunting.

Distance

Here the texts part ways.

The Danish article is categorical: at roe deer, whatever your skill, never beyond twenty metres — and the Danish association’s recommendations page gives the same figure as the maximum recommended distance. The European federation’s FAQ says the bowhunter gets “usually within 30 meters”, which is a description, not a rule.

The French charter declines, in writing, to give a figure. The hunter seeks to get ever closer, it says, but “we give no value to «close»”: it is a personal parameter, a choice made with lucidity, which depends on the conditions and on the hunter’s physical and psychological form. The Finnish principles say only that one shoots solely from distances that are sure for oneself.

Firm figures are found in the general codes, but they are for firearms: the Danish rules give twenty, twenty-five and thirty metres for the shotgun and a hundred metres for the rifle, and the Hungarian code thirty to fifty metres for small game and a hundred to a hundred and fifty for big game.

The moment

The best sentence in everything we read is in the French charter, under the heading about creating the conditions for an easy shot: “Chaque tir est le fruit d’une décision.” Every shot is the fruit of a decision. And one may shoot, the text goes on, only when all the conditions are met: game that is calm and at a good distance, the target area clearly visible, a favourable angle, the arrow’s path clear of any obstacle.

The Danish article says the same point by point. Its full list, written for roe deer:

After the list the text has one more sentence: the chance of a shot is not always there, even when you are at your own comfortable shooting distance. We took the meaning of the two hunters’ terms from a Danish hunting glossary for schools, for “spidskud”, and from a Danish article on roe deer behaviour, for “sikrer”.

Its counterpart comes from a text written for the gun. The Hungarian code asks the hunter for moderation, because a person with a gun becomes a hunter only when, weighing the circumstances, they are also able to spare the game, letting it go without a shot. The same code forbids the guide to hurry a guest or push them into a shot with a risky outcome.

On how this is checked in an exam — or, more precisely, on the fact that it is not — we have written separately, in “What is not examined”.

After

Here things turn over. The texts written for the bow, so attentive to the moment of the shot, say very little about what follows.

The French charter mentions tracking only as one of the three sides on which hunters should know their limits. The Finnish principles, the Danish article and the Pope and Young rules say nothing. The American standard is the only one that gives a rule: wait before taking up the trail, normally at least an hour, and at least three to eight hours after a hit in the abdomen. It is a course rule; the text points to no measurement. And the European federation’s FAQ says that in recovering game it is advisable to use the most effective methods and that, in such cases, the use of firearms may be recommended.

The general codes are the firm ones here. The European Charter asks hunters to strive to track down and dispatch wounded game efficiently. The Danish rules ask that a possible search be planned in advance and that contact be made with a certified blood-tracking dog handler. The Hungarian code makes expert and persistent tracking the duty of every hunter, and adds something we have seen written nowhere else: the result of the shot is to be checked even when the miss seems certain. Wounded game, once found, must be put out of its suffering without delay.

The others

The French charter opens with a heading that puts things in their place: “A hunter above all”. The bowhunter stands with other hunters, respects their ways of hunting and takes care not to claim special virtues compared with them. A hunter’s ethics, the text says, does not depend on the weapon chosen but on conduct in the field: towards nature, towards game, towards other hunters and towards those who do not hunt.

The general codes all have a chapter on the people who do not hunt. The Danish rules ask for acceptance and tolerance towards the other users of nature, “just as you would like to be accepted and tolerated yourself”. The Hungarian code says that the judgement passed on hunting rests on what is seen of each individual hunter’s conduct.

Where ethics is in the law

In most places, everything above is recommendation. The associations’ texts are not rules, and the European Charter calls itself non-binding. But in three of the countries we read, hunting ethics appears in the law itself.

The German federal hunting act requires, in a single sentence, that the generally recognised principles of Weidgerechtigkeit — hunting propriety — be observed when hunting, without defining them. The Lower Austrian hunting act has a similar sentence. What the concept means is set out in the German hunting federation’s position of 2000: the sum of the written or unwritten rules, with three sides — the animal, which is to be spared avoidable pain, the environment, and other people. The German federation writes two things worth keeping. That it is by no means the case that everything not expressly forbidden is allowed. And that custom — the hunter’s language, the sprig laid on the game — is not ethics: whoever breaks it breaks a custom, not a principle. In both countries the bow is prohibited for hunting; the mechanism is on Germany’s page and Austria’s page.

Hungary goes furthest. The Hungarian chamber act requires the chamber to draw up the rules of hunting ethics, obliges members to follow them when hunting and makes a breach an ethical offence, judged by ethics committees. The penalties run from a reprimand and a fine to the cancellation of the hunting licence, suspension and expulsion; the heavier ones may be applied only for repeated and serious breaches.

Romania

In Law 407/2006, as consolidated on 17 November 2025, the word “etic” (ethical) does not appear. We searched the whole text: the string of letters occurs 331 times — 330 times inside “cinegetic” (relating to game) and once inside “genetice”. “Moral” occurs twice, in “daune morale” (non-pecuniary damages). We checked only the act, not its implementing orders.

The framework statute of the organisations affiliated to AGVPS, the Romanian hunters’ association, obliges members, in article 8 (h), “to respect and promote the principles of ethics in hunting and/or fishing” and to hunt “with appropriate equipment”. What those principles are, the statute does not say, and it points to no text.

For the bow the question has no object for now: in Romania hunting with a bow is a poaching offence, as Romania’s page shows.

What we think

What follows is our opinion, not a finding.

Read together, the texts show a symmetry we were not looking for. Those written for the bow are at their best at the moment of the shot and at their thinnest on what comes after it. Those written for the gun are the reverse: firm on the search for the wounded animal, silent on the distances and angles of the bow. Whoever reads only one of the two halves is left with half an ethics.

We are not proposing a code here. A journal that says of itself that it gives no rules is not the place for one. We say only that whoever sets out to write one some day does not start from nothing, and that the best sentences are already written. One is French and is about the bow: every shot is the fruit of a decision. The other is Hungarian and is about the gun: you are a hunter only once you know how to spare the game.

Neither needs a figure to be understood. Perhaps that is why they have reached paper so rarely.

Sources:

Citește articolul în română