BUENOS AIRES, Oct 13 (NNN-EFE) — The president of the Mexican Hunting Federation, Mario Alberto Canales, died in Argentina when he was rammed by a buffalo he was trying to hunt in the province of Entre Ríos, in the northeast of the country, police sources reported Wednesday.
“At a very short distance, about 30 meters away, when he fired the shot, he was waiting for the buffalo to fall to the ground, but it did not. The animal became enraged, it rammed him and, once he was on the ground, this person was hit several times by the animal, which caused him serious injuries”, explained Cristian Graciani, head of the Rural Crime Prevention Brigade of Gualeguaychú, a town close to the place of the incident.
In declarations to the Todo Noticias channel, the commissioner specified that the details of what happened – which is already being investigated by a local Prosecutor’s Office – are known from the account given by the tour guide of the expedition, the only person who was with the victim at the time.
The Mexican Hunting Federation issued a statement of condolences, in which it emphasized that he was “a great man and much better friend” and a “conservationist and tireless fighter for the rights of hunters”.
The commissioner pointed out that the victim and other Mexican companions with whom he had traveled to Argentina “had obtained the corresponding permits for hunting and adventure tourism”, and specified that only Canales, together with the guide, was hunting the buffalo, while the others were in another field hunting pigeons.
Although what happened has now been reported in the press, the event took place last Friday and it was on Sunday when the 64-year-old hunter’s relatives were able to watch over him in Gualeguaychú after traveling to Argentina, according to local Argentinean media.
Graciani explained that the place of the hunt – close to the border with Uruguay – is an “inhospitable area” of scrubland that has no telephone signal, so the people who requested help for what happened used a satellite phone, with which they first called an Uruguayan aeroclub, from where they alerted the authorities of Gualeguaychú.
“When we arrived at the place, an ambulance from a private clinic was already there, with a doctor who had corroborated the death of this person,” he said. — NNN-EFE