International Exhibition for Arms, Fishing and Hunting

The 31st FeHoVa Weapons, Fishing, Hunting International Exhibition opened on Thursday at the Hungexpo Budapest Congress and Exhibition Center, with 200 exhibitors from 13 countries presenting their products at the event, which will be open until 9 February.

At the opening ceremony, the Hungarian Minister of Agriculture István Nagy stressed the need to preserve the biodiversity of the earth, and game management is one of the means of doing this, alongside the protection of endangered species.

He said that in the 2023/24 hunting year, 343,000 big game animals were used in 1,449 hunting areas, with a total of 562,000 trophies of hares and pheasants. Almost 73,000 trophies were judged, 58% of which were deer, 29% of which were roe deer and 8% of which were fallow deer.

Despite the difficulties, the financial balance of game management was positive in the same period, with a profit of HUF 3.7 billion. Hungarian game management is managing the populations of huntable species in a sustainable way, in line with international conventions and EU legislation, he added.

The Agriculture Minister said that game management has also turned to modern, electronic solutions, and the amendment to the law will also allow the use of electronic logbooks, which will be linked to a national online system providing up-to-date data.