Hunter cleared of stabbing boar and killing a badger
Gruesome videos of killings played to court
A man who posed next to a dead boar and was accused of stabbing it, as well as being accused of killing a badger and a deer has been been cleared of the offences after a two-day trial.
But Mark Bond, of Westwood Road, Loose, Maidstone, was found guilty of killing a fallow deer on another occasion and causing unnecessary suffering to a female Patterdale he owned named Vegas, after he failed to take her to the vets when she suffered repeated serious injuries while hunting.
The RSPCA seized Bond’s dogs after visiting with a warrant in October 2019 - a year after the alleged offences were uncovered from WhatsApp messaged in a separate case.
Inspector Pippa Boyd told the court pictures and videos were shared of a boar, badger and deer being killed by dogs she think belonged to the 38-yearold.
One graphic video showed three dogs attack a boar before a knife was plunged into it, while another showed a thorncoloured dog, believed to be Bond’s, ragging a badger around with blood splattered across its face.
A third showed dogs with a dead deer, where a man comments: “Just done a deer lads, with the dogs.”
Bond, and his defence solicitor Alex Weller, said there was no way the prosecution could prove when, where or who was in the videos.
Prosecuting, Richard Reynolds, told the court how one of the pictures uncovered from Bond’s WhatsApp showed a “trophy picture” of him with a dead boar propping its head up.
But Bond again denied letting
dogs attack the boar or stabbing it, instead claiming this was a different boar from the video and was legally shoot by a friend of his while they were on land with the permission of the landowner.
Further messages read to the court heard Bond “joke” about his dog Vinnie getting a fallow deer, with one reading: “I’ll be eating venison for a week.”
Another detailed how his dog Vegas, a terrier used to go down holes and flush out wildlife, had
suffered another injury which left “two holes” in her mouth and her “jaw falling off”.
When questioned Bond told the court he hadn’t taken Vegas to the vets and self-medicated her on Metacam and amoxicillin.
Despite this, he was told he faces a custodial sentence or community order and will be sentenced after a pre-sentencing report is completed.
He could also be disqualified from owning dogs.