The video is spreading like wildfire on social networks and already has more than a million views on the Facebook page of Hugo Clément, journalist activist for animal welfare.
The content of this odious scene?
It was filmed in December 2019, a young domesticated boar walks in confidence next to hunters, sniffs them without aggressiveness, like a dog.
One of the hunters even films this funny and good-natured moment.
Suddenly, another brandishes his rifle and fires a bullet at point blank range in the head of the animal.
The beast collapses.
It was Hercules, the young wild boar taken in ten months earlier by Alain Martin when his mother had succumbed to the bullets of the hunters.
Liverdy-en-Brie, this Thursday.
Alain Martin, here in the middle of his 170 hectare park where deer, fallow deer and wild boar live.
LP / Sophie Bordier
Owner since 1996 of the domain of Monceau spread over 170 hectares around the castle in Liverdy-en-Brie (Seine-et-Marne), this professional sylviculturist introduced deer and fallow deer in this vast natural space in 1998.
A childhood dream for someone who grew up in Montreuil-sous-Bois in Seine-Saint-Denis.
Emotion hugs his voice.
“Hercules was ten months old.
I had bottle-fed him.
He slept outside in the estate, but every day he came to eat his milk and pasta at the foot of the house.
He was used to the human presence.
For me, it wasn't just an animal, it was my baby.
It was fusional and it made me feel good, ”says Alain Martin.
A complaint dismissed
He filed a complaint.
The gendarmes of Tournan-en-Brie opened an investigation and found the trail of the author of the shooting.
“He told them he had killed the boar as part of the hunt.
However, I was finally able to obtain the video shot by one of the hunters present.
This has nothing to do with !
Hercules followed them out of the park and the guy killed him.
It is not hunting, but a free act.
An assassination.
"
Life-threatening proceedings were initiated as the point-blank shot could have caused the ball to rebound and hit another nearby hunter, as can be seen in the video.
But in the end, the Melun prosecutor's office dismissed the case.
Alain Martin was informed of this last December.
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The video broadcast since Tuesday provoked reactions from the Minister of Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili, and the Secretary of State for Biodiversity, Bérangère Abba on Wednesday evening.
They ordered the opening of an investigation by the French Office for Biodiversity (formerly the National Hunting and Wildlife Office) under the supervision of their ministry.
This video is shocking in more than one way.
With @barbarapompili we ask @ OFBiodiversite to immediately launch an investigation https://t.co/GwGuJDguNM
- Berangere Abba (@b_abba) February 24, 2021
An announcement that comforts Alain Martin.
“I'm happy for Hercules.
I am not an anti-hunt.
I respect the hunters.
But they must have an ethic, ”he continues.
“In front of the gendarmes, the author of the shooting said that he did not know why he had killed Hercules.
For this odious and gratuitous act, I thought that justice would sanction this man who recognized the facts, proof in support.
I would have liked the other hunters or their federation to react, to take sanctions against him.
But there is an omerta… ”
"It has been going on for 25 years"
And he knows what he is talking about because the liabilities are heavy between Alain Martin and the hunters.
On December 15, 2019, a deer from his property was killed in the field.
At 5:03 p.m., one of the eleven surveillance cameras he installed films two men who then shoot the animal by the head to leave the estate and retrieve it.
Steal it.
The same month, a large deer nicknamed Biniou was shot in the shoulder.
Despite the care that Alain Martin gave him, the beast died.
Liverdy-en-Brie, December 15, 2019. In this CCTV image, we see two men taking away the deer they have just slaughtered inside Alain Martin's property.
DR
“It has been going on for 25 years.
We cut my fences, we enter illegally, we shoot, we kill and we steal animals.
I filed a dozen complaints.
So there, I decided to publicize.
"
The straw that broke the camel's back after the assassination of Hercules?
It is this other stag shot with buckshot in December 2020. “It was a large dominant stag of about fifteen years born on the property.
He was covered in lead.
This does not kill him immediately but causes him great pain.
You had to see his gaze towards me.
I had to euthanize him in front of the gendarmes… ”
Alain Martin dreams of expanding the estate “to create a large natural space where animals are protected, where children can watch the deer slab… and keep hunters even further away!
"
"Intolerable", according to the president of the hunters of the 77
President of the departmental hunting federation which has 12,000 hunters, Benoit Chevron reacts strongly to the video of the death of Hercules: “It is intolerable, unacceptable!
This hunter deserves a final license withdrawal.
He was fired from the hunting society to which he belonged, ”he says.
He admits that hunters "don't have to enter private property."
But according to him, “it's not hunters who break fences to kill Alain Martin's animals.
These are poachers who act, even in broad daylight.
In December, game is in great demand.
"
Liverdy-en-Brie, December 2019. Aged 17, the deer called Biniou (right) died after being shot while in Alain Martin's estate.
DR
Benoit Chevron also believes that “the animals themselves break the fences to get food outside because they are in overabundance in the park.
They don't have enough to eat.
This causes game damage to crops.
In the end, he must have a hermetically sealed park and regulate his animal population.
"
A masked counter-attack that Alain Martin immediately dismantles.
“I respect the law: I have already paid 18,000 euros for the damage caused by animals outside.
Our animals are not starving: this winter 2020-2021, I bought 30 tonnes of hay and more than 100 tonnes of silage!
», Details the owner of the Monceau estate.