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Bern

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Cantonal system

Permits

Base licence and licences A to E

A recognised exam opens the base licence; chamois, roe deer, red deer, wild boar and waterfowl each need a further licence.

Article 6 JWG lists four personal conditions: having legal capacity; producing on request, before the authorisation is issued, a certificate of good standing showing no conduct incompatible with hunting; having passed a recognised hunting exam; and having paid the prescribed regale charges and fees. The authorisation is refused if the person has been excluded from hunting by judgment or administrative measure, or if their health would put others at risk; the competent office may require a medical examiner's certificate. Article 7 then builds the Bernese system in tiers. The base licence covers huntable species except chamois, roe deer, red deer, wild boar and waterfowl. On top come licence A (up to two chamois), licence B (up to two roe deer), licence C (red deer), licence D (wild boar) and licence E (waterfowl). Licences A to E can only be bought together with a base licence, and one person may hold only one licence A and one licence B at a time. For each further chamois or roe deer, article 8 provides a supplementary licence, whose annual quotas are set according to the hunting plan and the expected demand.

Seasons

Season 2026/2027: closed days and full-moon nights

Red deer from 1 to 20 September, chamois from 10 to 30 September; in October and November three weekdays are closed.

For the 2026/2027 period the hunting inspectorate announces a three-part red deer hunt: the main hunt from 1 to 20 September 2026, the late hunt from 10 October to 15 November 2026, and if needed a special hunt from 23 November to 5 December 2026 at the latest. The chamois hunt runs from 10 to 30 September 2026. Quotas apply in conjunction with the decisions taken for the hunting period, and the canton publishes openings and closures wildlife-area by wildlife-area, updated daily. The weekly calendar matters as much as the dates. These are not hunting days: Sundays, Christmas (25 and 26 December), New Year (1 and 2 January) and the prescribed protection days. In October and November, daytime hunting is forbidden on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays; the one exception is the Thursday roe deer hunt in areas where forest damage has become unbearable, on registration with the game warden the day before. From 16 November to the end of February, night hunting is open six days before and four days after the full moon, for certain species and only if you have registered with the game warden for the night stand.

Regulations

Bern: licence hunting and per-species planning

The canton exercises its regale by issuing personal authorisations; planning sets annual quotas for each species.

The Bernese act on hunting and wildlife protection (Gesetz über Jagd und Wildtierschutz, JWG, BSG 922.11) of 25 March 2002 implements and supplements federal law. Among its aims it explicitly names promoting an attractive, ethically conducted licence hunt with strong individual responsibility on the hunters' part. Article 4 states the regime plainly: the canton exercises its hunting regale by issuing personal hunting authorisations — the Patentjagd. The territory is not leased; the right to hunt attaches to the person and to the licence they have bought. Article 3 adds the other Bernese pillar, planning. It sets, for each species, the population sizes to be reached in the medium term and the annual hunting quotas; where populations run too high or too low, quotas are differentiated by region. Three further texts complete the act: the hunting ordinance (JaV, BSG 922.111) and the wildlife protection ordinance (WTSchV, BSG 922.63), both of 26 February 2003, and the directorate ordinance on hunting (BSG 922.111.1) of 27 March 2003.

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