About Slovenian hunting organisation

The Slovenian Hunting Association (LZS - Lovska zveza Slovenije) is the main hunting organization, uniting around 22,200 hunters known as hunting families. There are 416 hunting grounds in Slovenian territory. The mission of the association is the sustainable management of wild game, the preservation of the nature, education of hunters as well the general public about all important matters required for the preservation of game.

100 years of organised hunting

The 16th of October, 1907 is a milestone in the history of Slovenian hunting. On that day, nearly 60 hunters gathered in Ljubljana’s Hotel Ilirija and established Slovenski lovski klub (The Slovenian Hunting Club), as a counter balance to the German hunting organization Jagdvereina, which has been prominent at that time in the area. At various points, there have been some small beginnings of a national struggle against foreign hegemony over the Slovenian nation and the protection of national interests, but the main goal of the club was to unite Slovenian hunters and protect their common interests against the other branches of the national economy and to protect the interest of rational hunting and sustainable management of wild game.

The state of hunting at the beginning of 20th century was not good. Hunting was more and more expensive as the landowners, who were the main managers of their private hunting fields, were charging high fees for the damage caused by the game.

Additionally, both forests and game were experiencing increasingly significant damage caused by industrialisation and development. Therefore, the main goal of the hunting club was not solely hunting but also activism for the protection of the nature, professional management of hunting fields and the spread of expert knowledge not only among the its members, the hunters, but among the broad public as well.

After two years, when the club has been renamed as Slovensko lovsko društvo (Slovenian Hunting association), there were already 170 hunters affiliated in the association. The goal, that all Slovenian hunters in all Slovenian provinces in the Austro-Hungarian Empire should unite into a strong Slovenian hunting association, soon became realised.


Even in its early days, the association was active at the international exhibitions throughout Europe.

Ethical codex of Slovenian hunter

In 1999 Slovenian hunters wrote the first ethical hunting codex in the world, consisting of ethnical norms for hunter’s attitude towards nature, game, and other animals.

The revival of natural diversity

The preservation of the Slovenian native wildlife was from the beginning one of the main aims of the Slovenian hunting association. Several large projects have been made in order to revive some nearly extinct species. In 1973, the European lynx was re-colonized; the last one had been captured in 1894. In 1958, 1963 and 1972 the Alpine steinbock was successfully placed in the Julian and Kamnik Alps. With the prohibition of hunting, the presence of the large capercailye has been insured. Between 1989 and 1997, a major research project on the brown bear was run. In all those years, Lovska zveza Slovenije has managed to save many species which would otherwise probably have become extinct, as was the case in some other European countries.