Identifying a hunter responsible for killing a hun

Authors: Anna Schleimer Alain C Frantz Johannes Lang Phillipe Reinert Mike Heddergott

Publish Date: 2016/09/12

Volume: 12, Issue: 4, Pages: 491-496

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Abstract

While genetic profiling can be a powerful tool to solve wildlife crime comparably few examples of individual identification in wildlife forensics are available in the literature Here we report a case of an accidental shooting of a hunting dog during a wild boar drive hunt The market value of trained hunting dogs can reach several thousand euro No one admitted to killing the dog Wild boar hairs were found in the dog’s wound suggesting that the bullet first hit a wild boar and then the dog Since it was known who harvested each boar we aimed to use individualspecific genetic profiles to link these hairs to a bagged animal and to identify the culprit We genotyped 19 harvested boar and the unknown hair sample using 13 STRs In the case of the hair sample we performed multiple genotyping to ensure the reliability of the genetic profile We showed that we genotyped sufficient loci to distinguish between separate individuals with certainty While the three most informative loci were enough to differentiate the 19 reference individuals we did find a perfect match at all 13 STRs between the hair DNA and one tissue sample Since our methods were reliable and reproducible we passed the relevant information on to forestry officials who will use the information we have provided to attempt to find an amicable solution

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