Fleeing stag kills recreational hunter
A fleeing stag has killed a recreational hunter. The incident highlights the dangers of recreational hunting for all involved.
As one of the most forested departments in France, the Meuse attracts recreational hunters of big game. Many northerners travel there to hunt stags and wild boar. One of them, a 50-year-old man from Merville, a business owner and experienced bow hunter, fell victim on 5 November 2022 in Dainville-Bertheléville to an extremely rare accident. The incident took place in a private forest on the edge of the Meuse between Commercy and Neufchâteau. The man was participating in a recreational hunt organised by “experienced people familiar with this massif in the foothills of the Vosges,” emphasised Hervé Vuillaume, president of the Meuse departmental hunting association.
Fatal collision with a fleeing stag
At 11:10 a.m., emergency services were informed that the 50-year-old was lying unconscious after being struck by a stag weighing between 150 and 200 kilograms. The man, married with two children, could not be resuscitated. He was pronounced dead, writes lematin.ch.
“In the line of flight”
“In more than twenty years, I cannot recall a fatal accident under these circumstances,” commented Hervé Vuillaume, president of the Meuse departmental hunting association. “In this tragic case, the victim was in the animal’s line of flight — in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Hervé Vuillaume further clarified: “The stag is not aggressive — it avoids humans. Moreover, the rutting season in the Meuse ended several weeks ago.”
The northern gendarmerie stated that “several forensic measures must be carried out” to determine the exact cause of death. Hunting accidents are not isolated incidents — in Switzerland too, the criminal activity surrounding recreational hunting shows that the risks of recreational hunting are systematically underestimated. The animal welfare issues of recreational hunting affect humans and animals alike.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on the criticism of recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
