Hunter Martina Stawny-Wenta

She sits there completely silently. The binoculars in her hand. Toni and Bargus at her feet. Nobody makes a sound. The dogs are alert, something is tickling their noses. But they know that they are not allowed to bark. Annoying midges buzz around Martina Stawny-Wenta’s ears. She is looking at the salt stone only a few metres away from her camouflaged seat. She has put it there so that the game gets enough minerals after a long winter. The animals lick at it, and even birds peck out grains. Martina stands up. “It happens. Sometimes you sit for days on end and don’t see anything.“ So she moves on, further up through the forest. The dogs follow her. In a clearing, she checks the well-concealed wild animal camera which records around the clock. The main inhabitants of the forest are deer, red deer and chamois, foxes, badgers, martens, rabbits and raccoons. As a hunter, Martina needs to have a precise knowledge of the stock in her hunting ground. She has to know who is sick and healthy, who is old and who is young.

Women on the rise

Martina Stawny-Wenta’s great grandfather was at one time the forester for the Princely House of Thurn und Taxis, her grandfather was the head forester of Ruhpolding and her father Gerhard Frank was president of the German Hunting Protection Association (DJV). “As children, my two sisters and I were always allowed to accompany him. We lived in Munich back then, his hunt was by the Ostersee and we drove out there every weekend. For example, we had to clean the fallen leaves from hunt platforms, so that you could creep up quietly or build seats.” Martina took the hunting exam herself in her mid-20s. There are currently about 70,000 people with a hunting licence in Bavaria.

Ten years ago, the proportion of women was still at ten percent. It has since risen to about 30 percent. The training is comprehensive: plants, animals, hygiene, laws, weapons. A total of 120 hours of theory, plus 60 hours of practice and shooting training on top of that “You actually have to know everything, from the flowers to the animal species, everything,” says Martina. The Bavarian Hunting Association is a recognised nature conservation association, and its highest priority is care. “We observe. We put out salt. In winter we provide additional food,” says Martina, giving a few examples. Her main job is working at the hospital. The hunting ground that she looks after, together with her husband Dieter, covers around 500 hectares. It lies at the foothills of the Unternberg. Martina is usually out and about in the morning or evening. In the mornings, she already starts an hour before sunrise. She plans in a lot of time because it takes quite a while for her own human smell to dissipate in the forest. Otherwise the game would scent her straight away. They have sensitive noses. “It’s not so bad in the evening, because so many people have already been out and about during the day in any case. Then I don’t stand out.”

From the clearing Martina turns back off into the forest on a narrow path. She points to a hollow at the edge of the path, which most walkers would probably just go past. The grass is slightly flattened, the leaves pawed to one side. It is the sleeping place of a deer. It is on a slight rise, from which the animal can keep an eye on everything. Martina is at home in the forest, in nature. She is a hunter, angler and falconer. “My husband got his falconry licence before me and bought a Harris’s hawk. I helped him a lot and took work off him when he didn’t have time.” This is how Martina got into falconry and Hubert found his way into the family. Hubert is Martina’s eagle owl. Her husband gave him to her as a present when the bird was six months old. Hubert is now six years old.

Birds of prey like Hubert do not develop any social relationships. They are loners, conditioned with feed. It is not that Hubert does not know Martina, she is very much his attachment figure. But there is no cuddling. Despite this, Hubert has a girlfriend: “Fat Berta”, as Martina has dubbed the free-living, big female owl who regularly visits Hubert at the main mating season, sits on his big aviary in the garden and makes eyes at him amorously. Martina is not allowed to take Hubert on the hunt, this is forbidden in Germany. But she regularly goes for walks with him, including to the ice cream parlour, the inn, and schools and nurseries. She then wears a tough glove and Hubert sits on it. “The birds are trained by letting them eat feed from your fist. Then you slowly pull your hand further and further back until they finally have to climb onto it to get the titbit and they get used to it,” she explains.

Her scout through the forest is almost finished. She is soon back at the seat. Of course, as the hunter, Martina also has to regulate game stocks and meet the specified shooting plans. They are set by land owners and the Lower Hunting Authorities and are based on the browsing report. Because if there is too much game, tearing at the young trees, the forest cannot grow back. “I have enormous respect for every animal. They are living beings. I only shoot when I am one-hundred-percent certain. The game must not realise anything, it must not suffer, that has top priority,” says Martina. Once the animal is slain, the hunter gives it the “last morsel”, she puts a spruce and fir branch in its mouth. This is an old custom - and a form of showing respect. “Then I say a little prayer and thank the animal for being there.”