YouTube duck shooters fined

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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The three men from Cudworth, Saskatchewan, were identified by police after a flood of tips to the province’s anti-poaching hotline.

They were charged with careless firearms use, allowing game meat to spoil, hunting waterfowl out of season and illegally hunting migratory birds with a rifle. One was also charged with firing a gun from a vehicle.

David Fraser, 30, his brother James, 23, and their brother-in-law Jeremy Rowlands plead guilty Monday in court to 15 counts of violating wildlife protection laws.

“At the time that we did what we did we didn’t know it was a crime,” David Fraser told reporters.

“We had no idea that bullets ricocheted off water. And we made every effort at the time to make sure that there was nothing within eye view on the horizon of anywhere that we shot.”

In one scene, one of the three shooters unloads a hail of bullets at an unsuspecting duck, ripping it apart.

They posted the video online “because at the time we thought it was funny,” Fraser was quoted as saying by public broadcaster CBC.

It was viewed by more than 60 000 people, and provoked a national outcry.

YouTube duck shooters – comments