Three ways a law keeps the bow out

The same result, three routes

The guide holds 31 countries today. In 18 of them, going out with a bow is a punishable offence. Each page gives the article and the penalty, and that settles the practical question.

Something else is more interesting: the texts do not resemble one another. The 18 bans reach the same result by three different legal routes, and the route matters. It says who can change the rule — parliament or a minister — and whether the question was ever really asked.

1. By name

The clearest case: the law writes the word “bow” into a list of forbidden means.

Croatia is the example most often cited wrongly. The Croatian hunting act, passed in 2018, is sometimes presented as the law that opened the country to the bow. It did the opposite: article 66 lists it, by name, among the forbidden ways of hunting, next to the crossbow and air weapons, and article 68 defines a hunting weapon as a firearm. The details are on the Croatia page.

The Slovenian act of 2004 has the same construction and the same wording for more than twenty years: hunting with the bow is forbidden both in the wild and in hunting enclosures.

Czechia is the oddest case in the group, because the ban does not sit in the hunting law at all but in the Czech animal protection act of 1992: catching and killing wild animals “with bows and crossbows” is a form of cruelty, and the exceptions listed in the same act do not cover hunting. Anyone looking only in hunting legislation will not find the answer. The same happens in Switzerland, where the bow is named in a federal government ordinance rather than in the hunting act.

There is nothing to interpret in a ban by name. For it to fall, the text has to be changed, which means a decision by the legislator.

2. By closed list

The second kind does not name the bow at all. The law lists what may be used for hunting and adds that everything else is forbidden. The bow falls because it is not on the list.

The Dutch decree is the clean example: article 11.71 gives the list of hunting means, and the bow is not among them; using any other means is an economic offence. The Luxembourg act does the same in a single sentence: only shotguns and rifles may be used for hunting, every other means is forbidden. The Polish hunting regulation admits only long centre-fire hunting firearms. In Norway the regulation requires a firearm, and a new act, in force since 2026, replaced the old wording with a technology-neutral one without the ban falling; the chronology is on the Norway page.

The practical difference between closed lists is where the list sits. In Luxembourg it is in the act, so changing it takes parliament. In the Netherlands and in Poland it sits in a government instrument, which is easier to amend. That is precisely the Dutch situation, where the bow was placed on the Benelux maximum list in 2025 while the national list stayed as it was.

3. By omission

The third kind is the hardest to read from a distance: nowhere does it say the bow is forbidden, and yet it is.

Bulgaria is the most curious case in the whole guide, because the ban by name was deleted. Until January 2009, the Bulgarian hunting act listed the bow, in article 65, among the forbidden means. Then the word was struck from the text — not by an amendment of the hunting act, but by a paragraph of an act amending the Forests Act. The same intervention rewrote article 56 as a list of firearms. The result: the bow is no longer named as forbidden anywhere, but it never entered the list of what is allowed, and hunting with any means other than those in article 56 is punishable. This is where the European listings that count Bulgaria as open to the bow go wrong; the details are on the Bulgaria page.

In Sweden, the Swedish hunting act says that only the weapons and means laid down by the government may be used for hunting, and the government passed that power on to the environment agency. The agency’s regulations, in force since 2023, cover firearms only. The bow is nowhere forbidden by name: it simply appears on no list. The agency has postponed the decision several times, in 2021 to wait for a Finnish study, and a joint petition from the federations of March 2026 is waiting too; the chronology is on the Sweden page.

Romania sat in this category as well until 2008: neither the 1996 act nor the 2006 one mentioned the bow. Only an amendment of 2008 put it, by name, among the acts of poaching. It is the one story in the group we have reconstructed document by document, and the Romania page tells it briefly.

Why the distinction matters

For the hunter packing a bag it does not: forbidden is forbidden, and the country page says what the risk is. The distinction matters in two other situations.

First, when someone says “nowhere does it say it is forbidden”. In countries with a closed list or an exhaustive regulation, that is exactly the form the ban takes. The absence of the bow from the text is not a loophole; it is the rule.

Second, when a change is discussed. A ban by name needs a new law. A list in a government instrument changes with a minister’s signature. And where the bow is missing by omission, the change can begin with an administrative decision — in Sweden the agency has the request on its desk, and since 2018 it has said neither yes nor no.

Where the ban sits tells you who can lift it. That is the first thing to find out, before any discussion of whether it should be lifted.

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