Man Arrested After Causing Two Animals To Fight

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A man was arrested and charged with felonies for causing two animals to fight, according to reports.

A 22-year-old Oconto County man is charged with two felony counts of instigating a fight between his dog and a raccoon.

“It’s the worst I’ve seen in terms of abuse of animals in 35 years of being a lawyer,” John Evans, the district attorney of Oconto County said. Evans said that Friday was the first time he had to charge someone for instigating a fight between animals.

It stems from a situation earlier this month when Paul Detert allegedly tried to train his dog to hunt raccoons at his home in the town of Maple Valley. According to a criminal complaint, Detert put the dog in a 55 gallon drum and then put a live raccoon inside.

“It’s horrible, is depraved,” Evans said. “I cannot even describe what it might have sounded. He said, when asked, that the fight lasted five to ten minutes. So to be there and hear that, despite not being able to see it is unreal.” According to the complaint, when Detert opened a barrel the raccoon was killed and the dog bit him on the hand.

“So I decided to get the dog tied up and shoot it in the head with a revolver,” Evans said. In the complaint, deputies say they could not see a dog bite on his hand when they questioned Detert. As for the raccoon, Detert allegedly received it from a friend who has a license to catch them.

“People train their dogs with a lot of different animals out there, raccoons, rabbits, bears and lynx. There are legal ways to do it,” Joe Paul, a DNR Conservation Warden in Oconto County said. Paul says that most of the year it is legal to train animals like dogs with raccoons.

However, he says that is normally found in nature. Paul says he has never heard of anyone training a dog with another animal in an enclosure.

 

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