Morgan Keane, 25, had just lost his parents. He was remodeling the family home where he lived with his younger brother. It was there that on December 2, 2020, he was killed by a hunter while chopping wood a hundred yards from his home. A year later, his death is still difficult for his friends to accept. “It was brutal, it was violent, Peggy says. All his friends, his family, we hoped to see him grow old with us, get to know his children, spend time with him. We miss him, it’s really difficult. It should never have happened, I think every hunting-related death is one too many. “
Other friends of Morgan’s wanted to understand how a hunter could have shot up to 100 yards away with reduced visibility and fading light. They have opened an Instagram account, a Facebook page and a mailbox entitled “one day a hunter”, where for a year have been flocking testimonies which reveal a feeling of impunity on the part of hunters. “In any case, there is a real feeling of danger”, says Léa, one of the facilitators of the page.
“People say ‘we found ourselves in the middle of a fight and we had to turn around’, ‘we were threatened by a hunter because we were not in the right place’ or ‘ we killed our cat ‘… Incidents like that happen every day. “
Léa, close to Morganto franceinfo
Léa also explains that in some cases, the gendarmes do not intervene. “There are people who write to us that they went to lodge a complaint and that the gendarmes told them ‘we are not going to take your complaint’, or ‘it’s useless’, or’ don’t worry, the hunters know what they are doing, there is no problem ‘, she continues. We often have people writing to us saying ‘I called the gendarmes, they never came’. “
On the spot, the hunters recognize that there was a fault of the one who fired. But even if it was about a beaten organized by a hunting company, André Manié, the president of the departmental Federation of hunters of the Lot, rejects any collective responsibility. “We do regular safety training, we can’t do more, he retorts. You know, some listen, not all. Perhaps the hunter was posted incorrectly. “
“There are surely a few hunters out there who maybe do whatever they want, but the majority of hunters try to respect the safety rules and we shouldn’t put everyone in the same bag.”
André Manié, President of the Departmental Federation of Hunters of the Lotto franceinfo
The author of the shooting, indicted for manslaughter, was released under judicial supervision. His trial should take place in 2022. The relatives of the victim will meet them this Saturday, December 4 during a white march in Carjac, in the Lot, not to forget Morgan Keane.