A hunting trip went horribly wrong for an Australian man when a stingray “enacted its revenge”.
In footage uploaded to the IHunt Down Under Facebook page, Pete Griffiths was accompanied by a woman while hunting for stingrays to eat in a mangrove at Bowen, Queensland.
The duo can be seen using bows to successfully catch several stingrays and cutting off their barbs for their safety, before one of them manages to stab Pete’s hand.
He ended up hospitalised over the incident, saying the pain was “insane”.
“That stingray had four or five goes at us before we shot it,” Pete told news.com.au of the incident.
“That one that stabbed me stabbed me with a double barb in the middle of the hand, it went out as quick as it went in and then stabbed me again in the side of the hand and it was quick.”
However, he said things could have been worse if it was a larger stingray. Though on the positive side, it does taste delicious.
“And that was a very small one, there’s only two adults and two kids eating and that’s plenty of feed for us.
“It’s real nice, it very similar texture to scallops.”
Along with the video posted to Facebook, he wrote: “It’s no wonder Steve Irwin was taken out by one of these, the pain is insane and there’s no way I’d want to go through this again.
“Bow hunting for stingrays, has never required morphine/endone as much as it does right now. “The funny thing was, we turned the camera off as soon as I said what ever you do don’t do this!
“The pain was instant, and both of us knew we had to get out of the water asap, we were about 400m into the mangroves and waste deep.
“The pain was only about a 5/10 and I thought if it gets that bad that quick I’m in trouble.
“By time we got to the car I’d say we where at a level 6-7/10 and the pain was coming in waves.”
Pete is still healing from the injury but is recovery well.
“Day eight was yesterday,” he said. “I’ve been on endone, Panadol, Nurofen plus antibiotics, and the pain went from my hand up to my shoulder, like a dead arm. Now it feels like a bee sting like it’s itchy … the throbbing it’s still there.”
He says he is done with stingray hunting for the year and is moving on to red and fallow deer next, followed by rabbit and hare. All up, he hunts 17 species per year.
“They’re all feral, they’re all controlled by the government.”
Over on Facebook, some commenters were not exactly commiserating with Pete.
One wrote: “Nothing makes me happier than seeing nature get revenge.”
A second commented: “You deserved it. Steve Irwin didn’t. Maybe you shouldn’t hunt them.”
While a third wrote: “Steve Irwin would have something to say about this he would say stop. Why are u doing that.”
And another said: “Karma at its finest. Made my day!”
This is how he responded to the haters on a Facebook comment: “I love animals, I also like the way they taste, unlike you I catch my own, if you eat fish from the shop I dare say you promote commercial fishing, also I’d say you live in a city so your responsibly for the pollution of the ocean, if I wanted to kill everyday as much as I could, hell I couldn’t keep up with your mess.
“ … I’ve been involved in farming most of my life, I can guarantee that my diet as a hunter, is responsible for far less than your diet!”
Pete, a conservationist, says he’s selective in the animals he takes and explained further about how the methods he uses to hunts.
“Everything I eat, I hunt because when I’m hunting I’m only killing what I’m eating,” he said.
“No matter what you eat something is dying, I’d rather kill less than more. People think because I hunt I like killing, that’s not the case.”
He said the average person is killing more animals than they realise, and more than he is.
“No matter what you eat, like fruit and veggies … we’ve still got to clear ground, we’ve still got to poison all your weeds, insecticides for all the bugs and all that sort of thing.
“Then when the fruits and veggies go market with your apples they’re coated in wax to keep the bugs off but then we’re spraying insecticides with machines to kill all the bugs so they don’t put a little blemish on an apple because once they’ve got a blemish on an apple it’s no good for a shop.
“I guarantee what I do harms a lot less animals, bugs and insects and yeah at what point does an animal become more valuable because it’s cute or has a story, you need your bugs as well.”
He said chicken companies showed him what happened inside the chicken farms.
“I had a recycling company … timber mulched down for chicken bedding. They ran through and showed us the process of what chooks go through that you guys are eating at the shops, and there’s a reason they taste the way they taste and they’re the colour the way they are because they are washed in chlorine and it’s amazing the amount of processing they’ve got to go through to make sure it’s safe for the public.”