Friday, March 07, 2008

Pro golfer charged after killing birdie

PGA Tour player Tripp Isenhour was charged with cruelty to animals and killing a migratory bird after hitting a red-shouldered hawk on purpose while he was videotaping a TV show.

According to court documents, Isenhour was upset when the hawk began making noise and forcing another take on the show “Shoot Like A Pro” on Dec. 12 at the Grand Cypress Golf Course in Orlando, Fla. He jumped in a golf cart, drove closer and began hitting balls at the bird about 300 yards away.

After the hawk moved within about 75 yards and perched in a tall pine tree, Isenhour allegedly said: “I’ll get him now” and aimed for the hawk.



“About the sixth ball came very near the bird’s head, and (Isenhour) was very excited that it was so close,” officer Brian Baine of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, wrote in a report.

According to witnesses, Isenhour hit the hawk a few shots later. The bird, protected as a migratory species, fell to the ground bleeding from both nostrils. “As soon as this happened, I was mortified,” Isenhour said in a statement through his management company. “There was neither any malice nor deliberate intent whatsoever to hit or harm the hawk. I was trying to simply scare it into flying away.”

Jethro Senger, a sound engineer at the shoot who reported the incident several days later, said it was “basically like a joke to (Isenhour). He just kept saying how he didn’t think he could have hit it, which I think is a stupid thing for a PGA Tour golfer to say. He can put a ball in a hole from hundreds of yards away, and here he is hitting line drives at something that’s, I don’t know, a couple hundred feet away?”

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