Kavadarci Man (69) Arrested: A Shotgun, Nine Illegal Snares and 13 Kilos of Roe Deer Meat at His Weekend Cottage

A "Zastava" hunting shotgun, three 12-gauge cartridges, around 13 kilograms of roe deer meat and nine game snares. That, according to the police, is what a 69-year-old man from Kavadarci handed over when his weekend cottage was searched - and one of the snares still had traces of biological material on it.

The man, identified by the initials J.P., was detained on Monday at around 3 p.m. The operation was carried out by officers from the Mihajlovo Border Surveillance Police Station, the Cross-Border Crime Unit of the "South" Regional Border Affairs Centre, and the Kavadarci police department. On a court order, they searched the cottage and outbuildings at a place called "Vasov Grad" near Kavadarci, as well as the home he lives in in Kavadarci.

The law bans snares for a reason: they aren't hunting, they're traps that catch anything that walks past, and the hunter doesn't even need to be there. The biological traces on one of them show they weren't just sitting there as decoration.

The prosecutor has been notified, and once the case is fully documented, the 69-year-old will face charges of "illegal hunting" and "illegal manufacture, possession and trade of weapons and explosive substances". Worth noting: it was border police officers who cracked the case, acting on their own intelligence. How many cottages with snares in forests across the country have never had a check like this?