Animal Rights vs Professional Athletes, part II

First we had the case of Michael Vick, the NFL quarterback who was found guilty of felonies related to animal cruelty by the last quarter of 2007. Now we have another fellow who has gained a lot of criticism from animal rights lobbyists and from other lovers of nature: His name is John Henry Isenhour III, better known as Tripp Isenhour, and he is a professional golf player active in the PGA's Nationwide tour.

Unlike Vick's case, Isenhour is not being investigated for cruel activities against animal rights that took place during several years. In fact, Isenhour's case is related to a single incident, but a very reprehensible one: He's accused of deliberately killing a red shouldered hawk in December 12, 2007. According to the accusations, this fellow decided to do so when he was shooting a TV show at a golf club and the hawk was being a bit too noisy to his likes. Then he thought that an easy remedy would be to shoot golf balls at the hawk to scare it.

In a perfect scenario for Isenhour, the hawk would have flown away after the first ball passed close to it (let's remember that we're talking about a professional golfer who is, with all probability, very accurate in his shots). But this was not a perfect scenario for Isenhour, and despite his many shoots, the bird would not fly away. Then he took some other attempts until... SUCCESS! he hit the hawk right on its head, allegedly killing it instantly. The bird was buried in the golf course, and it is unclear whether the video shooting continued.

If Isenhour had hit a pigeon, it probably wouldn't be such a big concern for lobbyists and government (although it's equally condemnable). But he hit a red-shouldered hawk, a migratory bird. Now he got charged with animal cruelty along with the killing of a migratory bird, which could lead him to serve some months in jail plus a fine.

The interesting part is that Isenhour claims to be an animal lover, and he states that the killing was accidental. If that's so, why would he shoot several times at the animal to scare it? And why would he shoot with such a power to kill it? Didn't he know about the risks of shooting golf balls at living creatures?. It might very well be that this golf player is indeed an animal lover as he claims, but it looks that his impatience went a bit too far that day of December 2007.

Will the cases of animal rights against professional athletes have a part III?

With information from Yahoo! Sports.
Image from Wikipedia.