Luc Besson, the film director, has filed a legal complaint after hunters chased a stag into his garden in Normandy and killed it in full view of his 85-year-old mother, reports The Times.
“The stag wasn’t wounded. The hunters came in with their dogs and two of them finished it off with knives,” Besson said. “They butchered it. Shame on them. There was no nobility in this.”
In video filmed by Besson’s mother, Danièle Plane, on Friday, and posted online by a journalist, the hunters rush into the garden and ignore her pleas for them to leave.
“The stag was still on its feet,” Plane said. “It wasn’t hurt at all to begin with but it fell to the ground under the weight of the dogs.”
Besson said: “The hunters were really agitated. They unleashed dozens and dozens of dogs and I was forced to tell the staff working there not to go out
“I’ve got nothing against hunters but I don’t want hunting on my property. I’d like the deer to have a little island of safety.”
The film-maker said he had warned the regional prefect, a senior government official, last week that “the hunters were overexcited and this would end badly”.
The Orne prefecture said gendarmes were sent to the scene and prosecutors had opened an investigation. “This intrusion is unlawful and the animal was indeed killed despite the property owner’s protests. The prefecture does not support or tolerate this practice”, it said.