Recreational hunter must pay 40’000 euros for shooting dog
The shot dog had shortly before won several prizes at a dog show in Great Britain.
For shooting a prize-winning dog, a 60-year-old recreational hunter has been sentenced by the criminal court in Leuven, Belgium, to six months in prison and ordered to pay compensation of 40’000 euros.
Four bullets fired at a Rhodesian Ridgeback
The three-year-old animal, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, was killed with four bullets on 23 March 2015 during a walk in Bierbeek (Flemish Brabant). To find the perpetrator, the owner had an autopsy carried out. The results led investigators to the man from Bierbeek, who was hunting in the forest at the time with at least ten other recreational hunters.
According to the owner, the animal had been on track to produce promising offspring. This led her to demand a remarkably high compensation of 224’000 euros, as the Grenzecho reports.
Six months in prison and 40’000 euros in damages
The court awarded the owner 1’000 euros in moral damages and 39’000 euros in material damages. The judge considered it proven that the recreational hunter had fired four bullets in the open countryside. The court followed the prosecution’s request and also sentenced the man to six months in prison. More on crime and recreational hunting.
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.
