Court of Appeal hearing: the poachers in the Cher will not get off lightly
Between 2022 and 2024, six hunters tracked deer and wild boar in their 4x4s in the forests of the Cher region. These acts of unprecedented violence are believed to have cost the lives of dozens of animals… killed or crushed by their tormentors’ vehicles. One Voice has brought a civil action in this case which was documented by the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB), where the poachers were acquitted at the end of April 2025 due to a procedural error. We have appealed and will be present at the Court of Appeal in Bourges on 13 November at 9am to demand a verdict commensurate with the cruelty inflicted.
The six hunters, some of whom are members of the local hunting club, have all admitted to the facts. For nearly two years, they engaged in completely illegal and unusually brutal hunting. At the wheel of their 4x4s, they pursued animals in the middle of the night to kill them with gunshots… or by running them over. In August 2022, a wild boar hit by one of the cars was finished off with a dagger. And this is just one of dozens of victims who were terrorised before being killed, sometimes while being filmed by their executioners.
Possession of unregistered high-calibre weapons, night-time driving on private agricultural land, drunk driving… the list of offences compounding this outburst of cruelty is long.
Justice must be served for the persecuted animals
For their intolerable acts, these bloodthirsty individuals face four years’ imprisonment and a fine of €60,000. However, on 30 April 2025, the Court in Châteauroux acquitted them. The reason? The invalidity of one of the investigative acts, as the OFB identified the six perpetrators using cameras installed without the consent of a magistrate…
We have appealed this decision, refusing to allow a procedural flaw to erase the seriousness of the acts attributed to these trigger-happy individuals. On 13 November at 9am, we hope that the Court of Appeal in Bourges will hand down exemplary sentences, and we also request the withdrawal of their hunting licences, the confiscation of their weapons and a ban on owning new ones.
Join your voice to ours in defending all victims of hunting by signing our petition for a radical reform of this deadly practice.