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Russia probes reports Spanish king shot drunk bear

19 Oct 2006 16:24:15 GMT
Source: Reuters

MOSCOW, Oct 19 (Reuters) - A Russian region has ordered an inquiry into a report that hunt organisers, keen to make the King of Spain's chances of killing a bear easier, provided a tame one drunk on vodka, a regional spokesman said on Thursday.

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

National paper Kommersant carried a letter from Vologda's deputy chief of regional hunting resources management, Sergei Starostin, which accuses 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," 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.

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Last updated:Thu Oct 19 16:25:49 2006