A hungry German pensioner who tried to turn a friendly wild boar into sausages has been arrested after he cut off its head with an axe in a supermarket car park in Berlin.

The 80-year-old man had persuaded his wife to drive him to the supermarket armed with an axe and a sharpening stone after spotting the boar rummaging for food.

Local police spokesman Heidi Vogt told Central European News: “Wild pigs are increasingly being seen in the city especially around the suburbs where they come in looking for food. They have lost their fear of people, and although you can’t really get up close to stroke them, you can certainly get near enough to hit one of them with an axe.”

The man was caught when police spotted his 75-year-old wife sitting inside the couple’s parked car.

Picture credit: CEN

When they asked what was happening, she explained she was waiting for her husband who was “just coming home from work”.

Police then found the body of the decapitated and skinned female wild boar, which had been partially gutted with its entrails and larger pieces of meat already placed into a box ready to be transported away.

Police also found the axe and the sharpening stone, and then a short while later found the OAP himself hiding in the bushes.

He admitted to killing the animal with the axe and then butchering it saying that it was too tempting seeing all that good meat walking around and as he could not afford it otherwise, had decided to help himself, according to reports.

The man was able to show officers where he had dumped the pig’s head and the remains were handed over to a local forester.

The pensioner now faces poaching charges despite the fact that wild pigs are fast becoming a menace in the region, with record numbers breeding in the surrounding countryside during the summer, and hunters struggling to keep numbers under control.