Targetpractice

May 2013

SIX sheep were shot with a ‘ high powered rifle’ close to the Wicklow Way last Tuesday.

Roundwood farmer Owen Brady made the grisly discovery when he went to check on his flock on Tuesday afternoon. On finding six of his 80 strong flock missing, he immediately started searching the area known as The Hill, Glenmacnass, Laragh East.

‘I went up to check on the sheep on Tuesday and when I noticed some were missing I went around the hill to see where they were and I found them about 4 p.m.,’ said Owen. ‘ They must have been shot that morning because the blood was still fairly fresh on them.’

From Shramore, Roundwood, Owen farms lands around his home and also has grazing rights from Duchas for the state-owned lands around Glenmacnass. He said four of the sheep shot and killed were hoggets, last year’s lambs, and two dry ewes who had lost their lambs.

If being sold at mart the animals would fetch a price of €130 each, he said. Owen said the sheep were shot only 50 yards from the hugely popular walking route, the Wicklow Way but said people would have to know the area to find the sheep.

‘Where these sheep were killed was nearly half a mile from the road. They weren’t beside the road. You had to trek into the forest to get at them. I’d say it’s no stranger who did this. It has to be a person who knows the area and knows where the gaps are.’ He said he suspected that the sheep were shot with a ‘ big deer rifle between the shoulder and the heart and they all dropped within an area of 10x10 square feet. The gun probably had a silencer on it too.’

This is not the first time the Brady family have experienced such horror. Two years ago Owen lost 13 sheep in a similar fashion.

‘ The very same thing happened in the very same hollow two years ago and I lost 13 of them then. At that time they were all found within 20 square foot of each other, and by the time I came across them they were all tore up by the foxes.

’Last year his father Pat was grazing sheep on the far side of Glenmanass Waterfall in Laragh West when 42 sheep ‘simply disappeared’.

Gardai in Roundwood are investigating the matter.