A shock for a recreational hunter returning home in Ganderkesee (Oldenburg district): the family dog had mauled his 89-year-old mother to death inside the apartment. The recreational hunter dragged the dog into the garden and shot it. Police are treating the incident as a tragic accident.
Mother found lifeless in the apartment
When the son arrived home on Thursday evening, he found his mother lying lifeless on the floor and the ten-year-old dog sitting on an armchair, police announced on Friday. Given the extent of the injuries, the son concluded that the dog had mauled his mother to death between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. A post-mortem examination of the elderly woman confirmed, to a near certainty, that she had been killed by the dog. No evidence of third-party human involvement was found. More on this topic in the category Crime & Hunting.
Trigger of the attack unclear
According to a spokesperson for the public prosecutor’s office in Oldenburg, it remains unclear whether the dog had previously shown signs of aggression. The family had owned the ten-year-old male German Wirehaired Pointer for some time. Investigators were unable to determine on site what had triggered the fatal dog attack. When the son arrived, the dog had at least been sitting completely calmly on the armchair. As a recreational hunter, the 51-year-old is legally permitted to own a firearm. Why recreational hunting is an animal welfare issue is explained in the dossier of the same name.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland we document cases, legal questions and recurring patterns. 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.
