Days after the government proposed stricter regulations for the sport, a French hunter who fatally shot a Franco-British man he mistook for a wild boar received a two-year suspended sentence on Thursday.
The hunt leader received a five-year ban and an 18-month suspended sentence from the court in Cahors, a town in southwest France, in addition to a lifetime hunting ban for the shooter.
In 2020, when 25-year-old Morgan Keane was shot and killed while cutting wood close to his home in the village of Calvignac, it sparked an uproar.
"I never stop thinking about it; it has permanently changed me. At the beginning of his trial for involuntary manslaughter in November, the gunman apologized to the court and acknowledged that he had not ‘selected the target’ ".
The case rekindled hostilities between opponents of hunting and supporters of a rural pastime and activity that farmers consider essential for managing, in particular, deer and boar populations.
Many pedestrians avoid forested regions for their own safety during the busy times of the hunting season because of the loud gunshots that fill huge portions of the French countryside.
The administration of President Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday that it would tighten laws prohibiting hunting while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, increase training and safety standards, and install digital systems to alert other users of the countryside to busy hunting areas.
The severity of the penalties will also increase, and hunters who are seriously injured will lose their licenses.
However, authorities refrained from enacting a widely supported plan to outright ban hunting on Sundays out of concern for the reaction of the powerful hunting lobby.
According to statistics, over the past 20 years, there have been fewer hunting incidents in France.
But incidents involving damage or even death brought on by stray shots continue to be extremely emotional and are frequently extensively covered by the media.
Head of the powerful FNC hunting lobby Willy Schraen stated last week that he could not envision Sundays without hunting "for a single second."
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