It is not just birds, rabbits and wild boar who meet a sticky end in the Italian hunting season.

According to statistics published today, 35 people have also been killed in the past four months, and another 74 injured. Italy's anti-hunting league, the LAC, said all but one were hunters killed accidentally by their shooting companions.

But the 35th victim was a mushroom collector shot dead near Arezzo in Tuscany. Of the injured, 13 were also non-hunters, mostly people out for a walk in the woods or cycling down a country lane.

The annual bloodletting is a result of the unusual freedom allowed to shooting parties under Italian law. They can go on to private property and fire anywhere not within 50m of a road or 150m of a house.

Silvio Berlusconi's tourism minister, Michela Vittoria Brambilla - a noted animal lover - said she had tabled a bill to double the distance limits and scrap the authorisation to cross private land, which she said was a "violation of the right to private property guaranteed by the constitution". But her bill is likely to face strenuous opposition from Italy's politically muscular hunting lobby.

The guns were to fall quiet yesterday in line with recent national legislation that curbed the shooting season to protect migratory birds. The government was responding to EU pressure to apply a community directive which WWF said had been awaiting implementation since 1979.

But in several parts of Italy, the new law has been countermanded by regional governments. Some declared the shooting season open ahead of time. In Lazio, the region around Rome where yet another hunter was shot and injured today, it is set to continue until 10 February.

Italy's main bird protection body, LIPU, said regions that had altered their calendars were in a "situation of outrageous illegality".

Though politically influential, the hunting community is increasingly unpopular. A survey published by Eurispes, a research institute, found that that less than 18% of Italians regarded shooting as an acceptable pastime.