Attacker butchers 40 pheasants at gun club
A PEN full of pheasants was targeted in a late-night attack which resulted in 40 birds dying from horrific injuries and around 10 more from fright, the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned.
The birds were beaten with what gardaí believe to be a stick in a prolonged and sustained attack, while some had their heads pulled off. The disturbing incident has left a community in Kildare rattled.
The MoS understands gardaí are following a definite line of inquiry in relation to the gruesome incident, but are appealing for any witnesses who may have seen something suspicious to come forward.
No arrests have yet been made. A member of the gun club that was rearing the birds told the MoS the attack was done to ‘cause harm’ to the club.
Joe Hennessy, from the Monasterevin Gun Club, had been feeding the 180 pheasants twice daily and made the chilling discovery.
He said that in all his years of being a member of a gun club he has never heard of anything like this happening in the country.
‘We were rearing pheasants and I went up there last Wednesday week and I went in and I saw all the birds,’ Mr Hennessy said.
‘There’s a netting over the pen so they can’t get out of it and I notice all the birds were out around the pen and the closer I got I saw the locks had been broken off the gates and all the netting had been pulled down.’
Our picture shows the scene that greeted Mr Hennessy on Wednesday, August 26. Some of the birds were dead after being beaten, while a few had been literally pulled apart.
‘I found 40 birds in there that had all been killed with a stick or something. More birds were badly injured and died with fright afterwards. There were about 180 birds in total in the pen.
‘A lot of these birds had been let out and I gathered up about 70 of them, but there are still a lot of birds missing.
‘We don’t know if they were taken or what. We moved the ones that survived to another pen and found more dead over the next few days because of maybe fright.’
Over 50 birds died in total and Mr Hennessy said he has never experienced anything like it before.
‘Someone went in and attacked them with a stick, some of them had their heads pulled clean off. Someone wanted to do them harm.
The pen is on a laneway near Monasterevin and there are a good few people who know they are there. You can’t see it, it’s out of the way, you’d have to know it.
‘I’ve been involved in the gun club since a young lad and I’ve never seen anything like this.
‘I haven’t heard of anything like this happening in any other gun club. I’ve heard of vermin going in, but nothing like this, someone going in and hitting with sticks or whatever went on.
‘There was an electric fence there to keep the vermin out, that was stolen. This wasn’t a robbery, though. It was done to harm the club, I would say.’
Some of the birds were in such a distressed state after the attack that they died in the days that followed from fright.
‘The birds were in a distressed state and I had to move them to let them calm down. I know some of those birds would be shot after, but to go in like that and do that sort of harm, they had no chance at all.
‘The pheasants are hunted later in the year after they have been reared and released into the wild. We only shoot in certain areas and you have sanctuaries where you can’t shoot, they get to know their safe zones, they are clever enough. They wouldn’t all be slaughtered, they could be around for years.
‘To do that harm would have taken about 45 minutes, the pens are big with a cover over it, it’s like being in the wild, they’re able to get onto trees and learn how to survive in the wild, it’s big enough for that. It took time for them to go in there, get the lock off and pull the netting and go around beating them. It wasn’t just in and out in a couple of minutes.’
Gardaí are appealing for anybody that saw anything suspicious around the Monasterevin area between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, August 25 and 26, to contact them.
‘To do so much harm would take 45 minutes’