King's hunt for drunk bear investigated

October 20, 2006 12:00am
Article from: Reuters

RUSSIAN hunt organisers keen to make the visiting king of Spain's chances of killing a bear easier reportedly provided a tame one drunk on vodka.

A spokesman for Vyacheslav Pozgalev, governor of the northwestern Vologda region said: "The governor has ordered a working group set up...to check the facts published in local press about the killing of the bear."

National paper Kommersant carried a letter from Vologda's deputy chief of regional hunting resources management, Sergei Starostin, which accused hunt organisers of plying a captive bear named "Mitrofan" with vodka-drenched honey and then forcing him from a cage to be shot by Spain's King Juan Carlos I.

"His majesty Juan Carlos killed Mitrofan with a single shot," Mr Starostin wrote in his letter.

Russian hunt organisers are not complete strangers to such tactics. Keen hunter and former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had trouble with his aim in his later years.

Some of the animals he liked to stalk were either tied to trees or plied with booze.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20614157-13762,00.html