Bear ‘hunted’ by King of Spain was drunk on vodka
`King Juan Carlos of Spain was at the centre of an embarrassing scandal yesterday after it emerged he shot a domestic bear that had been fed honey-laced vodka to slow its reactions during a recent hunting trip in Russia.
The governor of Vologda, a region in northern Russia, ordered an investigation after a letter recounting the death of Mitrofan the bear was leaked to the Russian press.
In a letter to governor Vyacheslav Pozgalev, the deputy head of the region’s hunting grounds conservation department deplored Mitrofan’s shooting in late August as “abominable”.
“The party sacrificed a good-humoured and jolly bear who had been kept at a farm in the village of Novlenskoye,” Sergey Starostin wrote.’
