The likelihood of sharpshooters achieving clean and humane kills of Table Mountain tahr is more a matter of luck than good judgement, according to an affidavit by a firearms expert.
”It can be expected that a great many will be injured or wounded, although they may later die from blood loss from wounds or from infections,” said Cape Town security consultant Francois van der Merwe.
Van der Merwe, who trained police Swat marksmen from 1995 to 2001, compiled the affidavit as part of a court challenge by the Friends of the Tahr organisation.
The challenge was dismissed last month, and SA National Parks (SANParks) announced on Monday that it had begun a programme to shoot all of the approximately 100 tahrs on the mountain to make way for klipspringer and other indigenous buck.
SANParks said the shooting, by professional marksmen, had been approved by its ethical advisory committee and was the ”most humane method of removal”.
Van der Merwe said he understood that the marksmen intended to use soft-tipped bullets and ”silencers”, which meant a device to reduce muzzle blast and specially underloaded cartridges that travelled slower than the speed of sound.
A silenced round had much less energy than a standard one, and as far as a clean kill was concerned, was inadequate for all but the very best bullet placement.
Because the silenced bullet travelled more slowly, with a more pronounced trajectory, the accuracy of any shots fired from a distance was ”compromised”.
”Such a shot might well only cause a shallow wound or cripple the target animal,” he said. ”At best, such a shot would cause slow death.”
He said the .223 ammunition recommended by the ethics committee was small calibre ammunition and ”in any event would be an unsuitable choice for shooting the tahr from anything except point blank range”.
”Given that they are wild animals, my professional opinion is that this is unlikely to be achieved, except in the rare event of encountering a target animal on a footpath.
”The probability of ‘clean’ killing the majority of the animals, where they are free ranging and moving targets, no matter what calibre of bullet or rifle used, is low.”
Van der Merwe said the fact that marksmen would likely be shooting uphill or downhill rather than horizontally would also influence accuracy. – Sapa