Recreational hunter shoots hiker
In Catalonia, a recreational hunter shot a hiker while aiming at a fleeing wild boar. The bullet missed the animal and struck the man.
Hiker hit instead of wild boar
Yet another recreational hunting event ended in tragedy in Spain.
On Sunday, 3 September 2023, a recreational hunter in Catalonia missed his target: instead of a wild boar, he shot a hiker.
According to local outlet «Periodico», the incident occurred at around nine o'clock in the morning, when a recreational hunter fired at a fleeing wild boar and the bullet accidentally struck an uninvolved man.
The recreational hunter was arrested
Emergency responders intervened quickly, but the hiker died at the scene. The police subsequently identified the alleged perpetrator who fired the shot. The recreational hunter, a 53-year-old man, was arrested at the scene and is being held in pre-trial detention on charges of intentional homicide.
Hunting association expresses ‘regret’
In a statement, the Catalan hunting association expressed its condolences to the victim's family and conveyed its “regret” over the incident. The IG Wild beim Wild systematically documents hunting accidents and criminal activity.
RECREATIONAL HUNTER RADAR
On the trail of concealed animal welfare offences, poaching and/or criminal activity? Report suspected cases to us! Help with the large-scale recreational hunter radar.
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.
