Recreational hunters torture wild boar in backyard
Recreational hunters torture a wild boar in a backyard. The case reveals the brutality that prevails behind closed doors in recreational hunting.
SOKO Tierschutz received a hunter's video from an anonymous source.
The video shows a recreational hunter killing a wild boar in the most brutal manner with a pocket knife in a rural backyard — the animal, apparently having woken up in a panic after being transported, fights screaming for its life while the perpetrator stabs it repeatedly. The accomplices present laugh and shout «Waidmannsheil«.
Perpetrators belong in prison
The animal's death struggle constitutes a horrific case of animal cruelty. «We immediately filed a criminal complaint with the Oldenburg public prosecutor's office, because the level of coarseness and brutality on display here is appalling and a clear case for the police — one that must lead to a prison sentence. The animal was most likely already severely injured during transport. We suspect the location of the crime to be in Lower Saxony«, said SOKO spokesperson Mülln.
The video is fatally reminiscent of a similar case from a year ago. At the time, a huntress had killed a domestic cat near Augsburg in a trap in an extremely bungling manner with multiple shots. As is so often the case in animal welfare proceedings, that case has still not been prosecuted and the perpetrators remain armed to this day. «The current video shows that such sadistic and brutal acts by hunters in forests and fields are likely just the tip of the iceberg. Politicians and the judiciary need to take a significantly tougher stance against hunter criminality», concludes Friedrich Mülln of SOKO Tierschutz.
The feigned outrage of the well-known dim-witted hunting associations is not credible. The videos show what hunters in Germany regard as amusing normality. So far, there are no signs that hunting associations are actively working against violence by hunters, pursuing and penalizing such cases.
The animal welfare organization SOKO is calling for a ban on recreational hunting and for non-violent, progressive concepts for dealing with nature and its inhabitants.
RECREATIONAL HUNTER RADAR
On the trail of hidden animal welfare offenses, 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. 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.
