MADISON, Wis., Feb. 10 (UPI) -- A dozen teenage boys may be charged in a two-year animal-killing spree the teens considered a contest of who could kill the most, Wisconsin officials said.
An estimated 20 to 45 raccoons and five to nine deer were killed in the past two years by the northeastern Wisconsin teens, ages 16 to 19, the state Department of Natural Resources said.
The boys allegedly shined lights into fields to attract raccoons and used baseball bats and golf clubs to beat them to death, then leaving them in ditches, the department said.
They also allegedly used the headlights from their vehicles to attract deer and then ran them over, the department said.
Two district attorney's offices took on the cases of the alleged "thrill killings," a term used to describe premeditated killings motivated by the sheer excitement of the act, the department said.
All the boys face civil citations, with two of them possibly also facing criminal charges, the department said.
"This type of senseless killing of wildlife is of great concern to both the hunters and those who do not hunt," chief department Warden Randy Stark said in a statement. "This behavior has nothing to do with hunting, and everything to do with bad decisions."
The department learned of the alleged thrill killings from interviews and a social media Web site, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said.
