Scores of animals herded past hunters

ANIMAL welfare groups in South Africa yesterday failed to prevent the opening of a week-long “driven hunt”, in which European hunters pay to shoot wildlife that is herded past them.

More than 25 Belgian and Dutch hunters took part in the hunt on a farm near the town of Alldays, in the northern province of Limpopo.

Taking aim from purpose-built platforms, hunters are able to shoot at hundreds of wild animals including baboons, antelope and warthogs corralled into a mile-long stretch of land.

If they wound them, then specially trained dogs will go after the animals and herd them back on to the track so they can be shot at again,

Just two months after the global furore surrounding the slaughter of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe, the hunt has rekindled controversy over the killing of wildlife for sport.

The National Council of SPCAs, appealed for the driven hunt to be stopped.

The group’s manager of wildlife protection, Ainsley Hay, said it had been trying to obtain a warrant to prevent the hunt from the magistrate’s court in Louis Trichardt.

She said an indigenous community in the area had claimed the land and was renting it out to individuals who were hosting the hunt as a way of earning income.

“They have built platforms that line the bush for the hunters to stand on and have employed locals to walk in a straight line beating metal drums to chase the animals into the slaughter strip,” Hay said.

“The animals have no chance of evading the onslaught and the hunters have no way of ensuring a clean shot or a humane death.

“From past hunts like these we have seen much of the kill can’t be eaten or used as trophies because the dead animals are so full of bullets.”

The hunt, at Braam Farm is due to last for a week. Hundreds of animals could be killed each day.

Professional Hunters’ Association of South Africa president Hermann Meyeridricks said: “We don’t know enough about this kind of hunting, which has been going on for centuries in Europe.

“I have no mandate to investigate activities of citizens of this country.” – The Daily Telegraph