In the USA, a hunter made an incredible mistake: While hunting deer, Michael Konschak discovered two large animals and mistook them for coyotes. He therefore grabbed his crossbow, shot the animals and then processed them expertly. In order to get the fur of the “coyotes”, he pulled the fur over the animals’ ears. All of that is legal in Connecticut with coyotes.
The problem: The “coyotes” were actually two shepherd dogs who had just escaped from their owners’ property and were already being searched for by their owners. According to her owner, Erin Caviola, a bear was probably to blame for the animals’ escape: it had attacked the fence and thus ensured that the family dogs could escape through the lock in the fence.
Michael Konschak now has to answer in court for his hunting mistake. During the trial, he now admitted that he only recognized the animals as dogs after they had been skinned and that he has been ashamed of his actions ever since: “I want to assure you that that morning I never had any intention of harming the victims’ pets”, as Michael Konschak testified in the process.
For the owners of the two shepherd dogs, however, this explanation is not sufficient. “We live with the emotional pain when we think about how they felt in their final moments as they lay dying side by side,” says Erin Caviola. They only found out what had happened to their dogs several weeks later, until then they had been looking for the animals with posters and calls. Especially bad for them: The heads of the dogs were removed during skinning and can no longer be found today.
Konschak is now in court for violations of the hunting law, but animal welfare experts are calling for the charges to be extended to animal cruelty. Konschak himself would have liked to see the charges dropped against conditions in a probation process. However, the judge did not follow this idea, so the trial against the hunter continues.
Source:NBC News
