Man, 80, slaughters wild boar with axe

AN 80-YEAR-OLD is facing charges of poaching in Berlin after he killed a wild boar with an axe.

Police were called to a forest near the suburb of Reinickendorf on Sunday after a resident reported a suspicious vehicle in a closed supermarket car park.

A 75-year-old woman inside the car said she was waiting for her husband, but when police looked for him they found him hiding in the woods with a freshly slaughtered wild boar.

The man told them he was a retired butcher. He said he loved wild boar meat but could not afford it, so had decided to hunt his own. He told them he had lured the “trusting” boar and then slaughtered it with the axe.

When police found him he had already skinned and partially gutted the animal, and packed away the entrails and larger pieces of meat to transport home. Hunting is strictly controlled and only licensed hunters are allowed to kill animals.

They can be dangerous and there have been attacks on people by boars who wander into built-up areas.

In one incident six years ago, a woman had to climb on to a car bonnet to escape a wild boar that injured four people before it was shot dead by police.