“King of Poachers” acquitted for lack of evidence

The Regional Court in Brno has upheld a not guilty verdict for a local man facing up to five years imprisonment for poaching. Josef Konečný was dubbed the “King of Poachers” by the media after police found over 1,300 deer trophies worth roughly ten million crowns in his home in 2005. He was acquitted by a district court on lack of evidence however, pleading that he had collected rather than hunted the trophies; the District Court upheld that verdict on Tuesday. Mr Konečný’s collection was first discovered after an incident five years ago when he fired gunshots in the street with an illegal homemade weapon. For comparison, one of the largest collections of antlers in the Czech Republic, at the Moravian chateau in Kunštát, consists of 200 sets of antlers.