Mistaken for game

When hunters make mistakes, horses must be afraid

They don't look like wild boar, they definitely taste different _ and yet: when hunters are overly eager when stalking game, horses have to worry. A foal was also "shot" in Upper Austria a few years ago because a hunter from Mühlviertel mistook it for a wild boar.

"Pony shot by mistake - a hunter mistook the little horse for a wild boar in the dark" - was the headline in yesterday's "Krone". A report from Lower Austria, reminiscent of a similar case in 2012 in Atzesberg in the district of Rohrbach. Back then, a hunter (25) had also "shot" a six-month-old Western Horse foal worth 15,000 euros in a paddock because he had mistaken it for a wild boar in the dark.

Foal "Nika" was hit so badly on the back by the hollow-point bullet that she had to be euthanized the next day despite emergency surgery. It had been the graduation present of a then 20-year-old from Hartkirchen.

If a hunter misses a shot like this, they can expect their hunting license to be revoked, at least temporarily.

Christopher Böck, Landesjagdverband OÖ

"Watch out, hunters"
Horses generally live dangerously when hunters are stalking wild boar in their vicinity - as a look at relevant hunting websites on the internet shows: In Oberhausen in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) in February, for example, a hunter mistook a horse for a wild boar and shot it. In 2021, the same thing happened with fatal consequences in Usingen in the German state of Hesse.

Such misses are rare
"It's very rare," says Christopher Böck, Managing Director of the Upper Austrian Hunting Association, giving the all-clear: "After all, a hunter has to know what he's actually shooting at before he pulls the trigger. Since the advent of night vision devices and thermal imaging cameras, such misses have fortunately become the absolute exception."