I'm disgusted by this story - sometime around Hogmanay, an idiot with an air rifle shot a semi-tame red stag several times in the head, leaving it for dead. The stag used to hang around the car park at Black Mount, scrounging food, and had become one of the most photographed deer in the country.
A passer-by found the stag lying by the roadside and told local stalker Alastair MacDonald, who is quoted as saying: "I put it down immediately and when we opened the head up we found five or six air rifle pellets. Obviously somebody had been taking pot shots at it."
I just hope someone catches the person responsible for this despicable act of wanton cruelty. Please pass any info to Strathclyde Police.
“Deranged” – PETA • “Super-posh” – The Mirror • "His own worst enemy" – D Barnes Esq • "Barbaric" – Liverpool City Council
4 comments:
What can I say. It's just sick. Where are those who care about animal welfare now? Not interested because a caring stalker finally dispatched the agonised animal? Sadly all this will do is increase calls for airgun bans when the majority of airgun users are decent, caring people. Lets face it- this kind of sick person would have attacked the stag with a hammer if he hadn't had an airgun.
That's awful.
We had a similar case a few years ago - some saw a blind old bull elk walking through a neighborhood where he always hung out. The man ran home, got a .22 rifle, and killed the elk in someone's front yard, taking a hindquarter and the head (big rack). They finally caught the guys. I was state editor of a Southern California newspaper at the time, so I got their mugshots and did a big story about the case on my page. Idiots.
I hope your press is treating this as it should - as a case of idiocy and poaching. Our local press has been pretty good lately - they haven't dignified activity like this as "hunting."
I'm so fed up with human nature, to tell you the truth. I'm a student of history and philosophy so I realize that the human race will probably never alter its cruel behavior -- made more vicious by these being conscious choices. But witnessing this type of suffering day in, day out has just about broken my spirit. I try my best to help animals wherever I can. And yet it's never enough to compensate for those who are deliberately killing or inflicting injury. I hope there's some cosmic justice. Who knows. People might be in a for a big surprise when god turns out to be that blind old elk NorCal wrote about. I hope so, frankly. And I'm a Catholic, so what does that say about me? "Whatever you did to the least of my brethren, you did to me."
James,
Too bad y'all don't hang 'em high like you used to...
People like that are the ones that give any type of shooting sport an ugly persona. It seems that the blame never lies with the individual but rather the firearm, or as in this case, the air rifle. The honest folk, the ones that enjoy and pay for everyone's access to the outdoors, are the ones that pay the price for the crimes of the sick.
And before anyone whines about the "poor and misunderstood" moron, let me remind you he would not have done this if someone had knocked his head off the first time he bullied the little kids in his neighborhood. I guarantee you that it happened, and nobody did anything about it.
Regards,
Albert A Rasch
The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles
Proud Member of Outdoor Bloggers Summit
Southeast Regional OBS Coordinator
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