SPCA catches illegal hunters

The Randfontein/ Westonaria SPCA has caught up with a group of illegal hunters Westonaria.

According to SPCA inspector, Janette Muller, they acted on a tip-off from a concerned member of the public that people were hunting illegally on a farm in the area.

The group, consisting of seven men, were apparently making use of greyhounds to hunt rabbits and small deer on a farm in the same vicinity where a farmer was found murdered recently.

“We went to investigate and found that the men were not only hunting illegally, but that the dogs they were using were, for the most part in terrible condition,”says Muller.

“They would set the dogs on the game, or send them down rabbit holes.

“If the dog would refuse to go down the rabbit hole, they would prod them with sharpened sticks and pangas.

Äccording to Muller, the Westonaria SAPS was contacted and the men were arrested.

“They got out on bail shortly after that and they showed up at my office demanding their dogs back.”

Muller says that the men deny hunting illegally.

“They claim they were merely out walking their dogs.

“Now they are threatening me and trying to intimi9date me in order to have the dogs returned to them.”

The dogs are apparently in fair condition.

‘A few of them are very thin,”says Muller. “But on the whole, except for the injuries where they have been prodded by their handlers, they are ok.

“What worries me is that the lot of them are very afraid of people and tend to cower in a corner whenever someone approaches them.”

Muller has vowed that the dogs will not be returned to the men unless a court orders it, or until after the case is concluded.

Watch this space for more as this story develops.