Man Killed by Boar He Was Hunting

Authorities in Germany are trying to find a wild boar that turned the tables on a hunter Sunday, fatally injuring the man after he fired a shot and followed it into a reed bank. Witnesses say the male boar apparently surprised the man as he searched for it, Deutsche Welle reports. The 50-year-old hunter, who was part of a larger hunting party but followed the boar alone, suffered serious injuries to his left thigh and fell into water, authorities say. The man, who lost a lot of blood after the attack, died in a hospital in the town of Greifswald, around 120 miles north of Berlin. The exact cause of death has not yet been determined.

The hunter fired a shot before following the boar into the reeds, but it's not clear whether the animal was injured. The regional hunting association described the death as a "tragic accident" and said it was the first of its kind in the area in decades, NDR reports. The group said boar hunters should wear protective trousers and put protective vests on their dogs. German hunters kill at least 500,000 wild boar every year, but numbers are still rising and authorities have called for more hunting to prevent the spread of swine fever from further east in Europe. (A charging deer killed a French hunter last month.)