Finland: the hunting right to the owner, the sea to everyone
The right to hunt belongs to the landowner; on public sea waters it belongs to every permanent resident.
The Finnish hunting act (metsästyslaki 615/1993) gives, in article 6, the right to hunt and to dispose of that right to the owner of the area, unless otherwise provided. Article 7 opens an exception unusually wide by European standards: everyone permanently resident in Finland may hunt on the general water areas at sea, on the islands and skerries in those waters that belong to the state and whose possession has been assigned to no one, and in the Finnish economic zone. Article 20 sets the general requirements for practice: hunting must follow the principles of sustainable use and be conducted so that game populations are not endangered, nature is not needlessly damaged and no unnecessary suffering is caused to animals. The continued yield of game populations is to be secured through appropriate management, and hunting must cause neither danger nor damage to people or to the property of others.