Recreational hunter shoots pony: Animal put down
Those who cannot succeed as recreational hunters without technical aids will not succeed with night vision devices either.
A recreational hunter in Lower Austria is reported to have mistaken a pony for a wild boar last week.
Pony shot with night-vision aiming device
The perpetrator is said to have been active in Neulengbach (St. Pölten district). According to police confirmation, the man claimed to have mistaken the animal for a wild boar. He used a night-vision aiming device, according to the hunting association. The shot pony had to be put down, and a temporary weapons ban was imposed on the man.
Night-vision aiming device permitted for wild boar
According to the Lower Austria Hunting Association, the aiming device is permitted for recreational hunting of wild boar and the man had met the requirements for its use. A complaint was filed and a report will be forwarded to the public prosecutor's office, said police spokesman Raimund Schwaigerlehner. The prosecuting authority will then decide whether a criminal offence has been committed.
The case once again demonstrates how recreational hunters make fundamental errors even with the aid of technical equipment — errors that cost animals their lives. Anyone who cannot distinguish a pony from a wild boar has no business being out in the field.
RECREATIONAL HUNTER RADAR
On the trail of concealed animal welfare offences, poaching and/or criminal activity? Report suspected cases to us! Help with the great 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.
