Recreational hunters shoot child and horse
In the Eifel region, a recreational hunter shot a horse dead, mistaking it for a wild boar. The animal died in agony. Police are investigating.
Horse mistaken for wild boar
In the small village of Bauler in the Eifel region, a tragic incident occurred on the night of 9 September, in which a recreational hunter accidentally shot a 2-year-old Western horse, having mistaken it for a wild boar.
Viviane Bastin is completely unable to explain the confusion with a wild boar. “He must have disregarded all safety measures, such as identifying the animal before firing. It is unthinkable what would have happened if I had been camping there with my grandchildren!”
The police are investigating on suspicion of violating the Animal Welfare Act and causing criminal damage.
Child shot in Kröv
According to charges filed in July 2022, a recreational hunter from a village on the Middle Moselle wanted to test his newly acquired small-calibre rifle on his property. One of the test shots went astray. The projectile flew onto an adjacent village road, where it struck a child riding past on a bicycle. The child had to undergo emergency surgery. A nerve in the leg is reported to have been irreparably damaged by the gunshot wound.
Eight months suspended sentence
He was required to answer for the incident before the Wittlich District Court. He was sentenced to eight months in prison suspended, after having also confessed to the act in court.
The Bernkastel-Wittlich district administration, as the issuing authority for the firearms licence and hunting licence, stated that the use of a weapon within residential areas violates applicable hunting law and would accordingly be penalised with the revocation of the hunting licence. IG Wild beim Wild systematically documents hunting accidents and criminal offences.
Further articles
More current hunting accidents and documented criminal offences involving recreational hunters can be found here: Chronicle of hunting accidents and criminal offences at Abschaffung der Jagd as well as in the Chronicle of hunting accidents in Germany, Austria and Switzerland at PETA.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland we document cases, legal questions and recurring patterns. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
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.
