Prison sentences following fatal hunting accident in France

Two years' probation

Two years after a fatal hunting accident in southern France, a court on Thursday, 12 January 2023, sentenced the shooter to two years' probation and imposed a lifetime hunting ban on him.

The 35-year-old hobby hunter had confessed to having mistaken his victim for a wild boar. The leader of the driven hunt received an 18-month suspended sentence. He was also stripped of his hunting licence for five years.

The case had caused a great stir in France and reignited the debate over a tightening of hunting regulations. The 25-year-old Morgan Keane had been killed by a stray shot in a small village in the Lot département.

Brigitte Bardot criticizes ‘President of the hobby hunters’

The shooter had obtained his hunting licence only a few months earlier and admitted to not having properly identified his target. The prosecution had demanded, for both defendants, suspended sentences alongside six months' imprisonment without probation, as well as a lifetime hunting ban.

France's foremost animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot referred to Emmanuel Macron in an open letter as the “President of the hobby hunters.” He was a “puppet of the hunting lobbyists,” in whose hands he was playing. Numerous environmental organisations and politicians in France had called for a hunting-free Sunday in order to reduce the number of hunting accidents. However, this proposal was not included in the government's 14-point plan.

Although the French, in view of several fatal accidents, are in favor of a ban, President Macron's government is not responding to it. A hunting-free Sunday would leave France “in ruins,” warned the hobby hunters' lobby. The Geneva model shows that professional wildlife management without hobby hunting works.