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Italy

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Permits

Firearms licence, qualification and insurance

Three cumulative titles: eighteen years of age, a hunting firearms licence and third-party liability insurance — after passing all five subjects.

Hunting in Italy requires several distinct titles. Art. 12(8) of Act No. 157/1992 reserves the activity to persons aged at least eighteen, holding the firearms licence for hunting use (licenza di porto di fucile per uso di caccia) and covered by third-party liability insurance for the use of weapons. Art. 22 sets out the route: the licence is issued in accordance with public security law, and first issue requires the abilitazione all'esercizio venatorio, obtained through public examinations before a commission appointed by the region in each provincial capital. The examination covers five subjects — hunting legislation; zoology applied to hunting, with practical recognition of huntable species; hunting weapons and ammunition and their legislation; nature protection and safeguarding agricultural production; first-aid rules — and the qualification is granted only if the assessment is favourable in all five. The hunter also chooses one exclusive form of hunting (Art. 12(5)).

Seasons

A national frame, a regional calendar published by 15 June

Regions publish the calendar by 15 June at the latest; the whole must stay between 1 September and 31 January.

Italy has no uniform dates: Act No. 157/1992 sets a frame, the regions adopt the calendar. Art. 18 lists huntable species in date bands — from the third Sunday of September to 31 December, to 31 January, from 1 October to 30 November, or from 1 October to 31 January for wild boar. Regions publish, by 15 June at the latest, the regional calendar and rules for the whole hunting year, stating for each species the maximum daily bag and the permitted hours, after obtaining the opinions of ISPRA and the national technical wildlife and hunting committee; they may depart from those opinions only with adequate reasons. They may amend the deadlines of Art. 18 for certain species according to local environmental conditions, provided suitable wildlife and hunting plans have been adopted beforehand, but the whole must remain between 1 September and the following 31 January. Selective hunting of ungulates may be authorised from 1 August. Any postponement beyond that, at most to the first ten days of February, requires a prior ISPRA opinion with which the regions must comply.

Species

A national list ordered by opening period

Art. 18 lists huntable species in four date bands and bans hunting during nesting.

Art. 18 of Act No. 157/1992 sets out the national list of huntable species, ordered by opening period. From the third Sunday of September to 31 December are listed, among others, quail, turtle dove, blackbird, skylark, grey partridge, red-legged partridge, brown hare and European rabbit. From the same start to 31 January come starling, fieldfare and song thrushes, pheasant, mallard and many other ducks, coot, common snipe, wood pigeon, woodcock, several corvids and the fox. From 1 October to 30 November open rock ptarmigan, black grouse, hazel grouse, rock partridge, Alpine chamois, roe deer, red deer, fallow deer, mouflon — excluding the Sardinian population — and mountain hare. Wild boar is hunted from 1 October to 31 January. Art. 18(1-bis) further prohibits hunting any species during the return to nesting sites, during nesting, and during the reproduction and dependency phases of birds.

Weapons and ammunition

Hunting means listed down to the calibre

Smoothbore up to two shots and calibre 12 at most, rifled bore at least 5.6 mm; five cartridges only for wild boar.

Art. 13 of Act No. 157/1992 lists the permitted means precisely. The smoothbore shotgun is allowed up to two shots, repeating or semi-automatic with a magazine holding no more than two cartridges, of a calibre not above 12. The rifled-bore gun is allowed with manual single loading or semi-automatic repeating action, of a calibre not below 5.6 mm with an empty case at least 40 mm high; magazines of semi-automatic rifled guns may not hold more than two cartridges while hunting, the limit rising to five for wild boar hunting only. The text also permits the two- or three-barrelled combination gun, with one or two smooth barrels of calibre not above 12 and one or two rifled barrels of at least 5.6 mm, as well as hunting with bow and with falcon. The use of weapons in category A of the European firearms directive remains absolutely prohibited.

Safety

Safety distances set in figures by the Act

One hundred metres from dwellings, fifty from roads and railways, one hundred and fifty metres for a shot aimed towards a building.

Art. 21 of Act No. 157/1992 lays down prohibitions, several of which are numerical safety rules applicable throughout Italy. Hunting is forbidden within a radius of one hundred metres from buildings and premises used as dwellings or workplaces, and at less than fifty metres from railway lines and carriageable roads, except farm and inter-field tracks. It is also forbidden to shoot from less than one hundred and fifty metres towards such buildings with a smoothbore hunting gun, or from a distance corresponding to less than one and a half times the maximum range when using other weapons. Finally, hunting is prohibited within one hundred metres of agricultural machinery in operation. The same article bans hunting in public and private gardens and parks, in historical and archaeological parks, on land used for sports, and in national and regional parks and nature reserves.

Regulations

Wildlife as State property, territory divided into ATC

Act 157/1992 makes wildlife inalienable State property; hunting is a concession and the territory is divided into hunting districts.

Italian hunting rests on Act No. 157 of 11 February 1992, «Norme per la protezione della fauna selvatica omeoterma e per il prelievo venatorio». Its Article 1 lays down a structural principle: «La fauna selvatica è patrimonio indisponibile dello Stato ed è tutelata nell'interesse della comunità nazionale ed internazionale» — wildlife is inalienable property of the State, protected in the interest of the national and international community. Hunting is therefore not a right attached to land ownership as in Germany, but a concession the State grants to citizens meeting the legal requirements (Art. 12(1)). The territory is organised by the regions, which divide the agricultural, forest and pastoral land assigned to planned hunting into ambiti territoriali di caccia (ATC), sub-provincial in size and bounded as far as possible by natural features (Art. 14). The regions then adopt the calendar and rules for each season.