48-year-old hunter found dead with gunshot wound at Palatinate drive hunt

What police found

Witnesses found a 48-year-old hunter motionless on an elevated hunting stand in the Palatinate Forest on Tuesday, 3 November 2026. Reports place the spot near Trippstadt and near Johanniskreuz, both in the Kaiserslautern area. Witnesses alerted rescue services and started resuscitation, but the man died at the scene. Police found a gunshot wound on his body and have not yet established how the injury happened. Police in Kaiserslautern announced the case in the evening, and they are handling it as a death investigation because the circumstances remain unclear.

How the drive hunt was run

Police describe the event as a Drückjagd, a collective hunt in which slow-moving beaters and dog handlers flush deer, wild boar or fallow deer toward stationary shooters. The slow, quiet approach is meant to let the shooters take aim at their targets safely. Police say 183 people took part in the hunt. Some reports used the term Treibjagd instead, a variant in which game is driven more intensively toward the hunters. The German Hunting Association says drive hunts mostly take place between October and December. Shooters wait on mobile stands without roofs, roughly two to three metres high, and their positions and spacing are planned in advance. Frederik Grüneberg, head of the office of the Rhineland-Palatinate state hunting association, said those positions are not changed during the hunt, which serves the safety of everyone taking part.

Forms of hunting and who may join

Hunters go out either alone or in groups, according to the German Hunting Association. Individual hunters most often wait on a high seat for passing game, a practice called Ansitz, while stalking, known as Pirsch, means moving slowly toward the animals. Group hunts, called Gesellschaftsjagden, come in two forms: Treibjagd and Drückjagd. Hunts are organised by state forests, a hunting lease holder or the owner of the forest, and participants are personally invited by the forest owner. Membership in the state hunting association or a regional hunting district group is voluntary, the association says, but a hunting licence is mandatory.

A second incident and open questions

During the same hunt, a 29-year-old man was seriously injured by a wild boar and taken to hospital, Der Tagesspiegel reported. According to the current state of the investigation, the two incidents are not connected. Interviews and witness hearings are still under way, a police spokeswoman said. Investigators are checking several possible sequences of events, and how the gunshot injury happened remains unclear. Officers recorded the personal details of people who took part in the hunt and seized several firearms as part of the death investigation.