Farewell in the High Alps: A Professional Gamekeeper Takes Stock

Sunrise in a Mountain Range

It’s a clear alpine morning. Wind slides over the rocky spines, dwarf pines bow under the weight of fresh snow, and the range holds that peculiar stillness only hunters truly know. This is country where red deer drift through steep gullies and chamois cling to sheer cirques—and where one man spent his life. A professional gamekeeper, driven and tireless, guardian of one of Austria’s great alpine hunting grounds for decades.

Now, with retirement on the horizon, his decision is set: he’s laying the rifle down. Not because he no longer loves the hunt—but because, to him, the hunt is no longer what it once was.

“Back then, hunting was a life’s calling,” the veteran says in a weathered voice shaped by wind and storms.

“You were a hunter, a steward, a caretaker, a teacher—and sometimes a counselor, for guests and for the game alike.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, he guided countless hunters through the range—sportsmen from across Europe and, at times, from overseas. Men and women who arrived wide-eyed, waiting for that first glimpse of a chamois buck or a red deer herd. To him, that was hunting: experience, understanding, and silence.

But the past few years changed something

“Today, guests show up who don’t know the animals,” he says. “They don’t understand how a chamois moves, or how a stag lives during the rut. They want one thing: distance. Three hundred, four hundred meters—like a shooting range, except there’s a living creature at the end.”

From Tradition to Ballistics

What hurts isn’t just the range—it’s the mindset behind it. “Hunting used to be culture, a craft. Now it’s often just technology. Expensive rifles, ballistic calculators in the scope, laser rangefinders, thermal imagers. And a guest boasting about a 500-meter hit—without ever truly seeing, judging, or understanding the animal first.”

He says it plainly: he no longer recognizes his own hunt. Where once knowledge of tracks, wind, terrain, and behavior mattered, today a button on a rangefinder often seems enough.

The old traditions — the last bite, the branch, gratitude for the animal taken—are shrugged off, if not ignored. “For many, it’s folklore. For me, it was the heart of it.”

An Inner Break

Psychologically, the rupture runs deep. For decades, his identity was bound to the hunt—to guarding and guiding. Now he feels like a stranger in his own trade. “I’ve lived the best hunting days of my life: silent stalks at first light, nights in the hunting hut, the trust of a guest lying beside me on a slope, whispering that he was too nervous to take the shot. Those were real moments.”

Too often now, he says, it’s about the photo, the trophy, the social-media headline. “The reverence is gone. And without reverence, hunting is nothing more than shooting.”

A Mirror for the Hunting Community

His decision to step away is more than a personal conclusion—it reflects a broader shift that troubles many in the hunting world:

• Technification: Where skill once ruled, ballistics now dominate.

• Detachment: Guests know animals from catalogs and expect a “service.”

• Loss of tradition: Rituals, respect, and gratitude fade.

• Commercialization: Hunts become transactions; ranges are marketed; animals are “units.”

For a hunter who understood his craft as culture, this is no longer compatible.

A Quiet Goodbye

His final walk through the range won’t be a victory lap. He’ll shoulder the rifle one last time, climb into the mountains, hear the stags bugle in the rut, watch chamois in the steep faces—and then leave. Not out of weakness, but out of conviction.

“The hunt I learned hardly exists anymore,” he says. “And with what remains, I can’t identify.”

What lingers is a sober epitaph for a hunting era—not romanticized, but cautionary. A reminder that hunting is more than shot distance, more than trophies, more than technology. At its core, hunting is relationship—with wildlife, with the land, with oneself.

When a man who devoted his life to red deer and chamois chooses to walk away, we should pay attention. Because in the end, the question isn’t just his. It’s ours: Where is hunting headed—and where are we willing to go with it?