A French hunter has apologised after killing a man he mistook for a wild boar.
The accidental slaying has sparked calls for tighter restrictions on shooting in the rural areas of southwest France, where hunting is common.
Uproar ensued when Morgan Keane, a 25-year-old Franco-British man, was shot while cutting wood near his home in the village of Calvignac in southwest France.
The man who fired the fatal shot, and the man who organised the boar hunt, were on trial today for involuntary manslaughter in the nearby town of Cahors.
Both could be sentenced to three years in prison and a €75,000 (£65,500) fine.
"There isn't a day I don't think about it, it's marked me for life. I'm sorry," the shooter told the court, admitting that he had not "identified the target".
The case has become a platform for both anti-hunting activists and defenders of the hobby.
Locally, farmers see the hunts as necessary to keep down the population of deer and boar.
When hunting season is in full swing, the sounds of gunshots reverberate through large swathes of the French countryside.
Many walkers feel threatened so avoid forested areas for their safety.
Gun-restriction activist Audrey Tindiliere, whose organisation was set up after Keane's death, says the group has garnered a lot of support in the short time it's been operating.
"A lot of people support us," Tindiliere said.
"Eighty percent of people are in favour of strengthening the regulation of hunting in order to improve the sharing of the countryside with hunters," she told AFP before the trial.
The prosecution wants both suspects to receive a two-year custodial sentence, with 18 months suspended.
This, they said, would underscore "the seriousness of the shortcomings that led to the death of Morgan Keane".
Earlier this month, a British woman was shot dead at a hunting party in France as her hunting companion was arrested.
The 67-year-old had reportedly been invited to a wild boar hunt when she was "wounded above the heart".
She was rushed to Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, where she died, public prosecutor Nicolas Heitz said.
The woman was with a 69-year-old male who had carried out a "shot with his rifle, which he was carrying at the shoulder", direct towards her back, according to a judicial press release.
The man has been taken into custody by police and a manslaughter investigation has been launched.
