A 55-year-old man was killed by his adult son during a hunting expedition in southern Italy after being mistaken for a wild boar, police have said.

Martino Gaudioso was said to have been shot dead by his son, aged 34, during a wild boar hunt in a densely wooded area of the Alburni mountains, near Salerno in Campania, on Saturday afternoon. The men were in an area that is off-limits to hunters.

A local police officer said that shortly after they set off on the hunt the men’s two dogs started barking, signalling the presence of boar. The father is said to have mistakenly positioned himself in his son’s path of fire. Amid the sound of barking and wild boar fleeing in the woods, the son saw a silhouette and started shooting.

“He thought he had hit a boar but instead it was his father,” the police officer said. “He immediately started to look for help … he was absolutely destroyed.”

Police charged the son with manslaughter and seized his guns.

The pair, from Postiglione, a small town near the Alburni range, were also hunting before the official start of the hunting season on 2 October.

The killing, which comes two months after the death of another hunter, who accidentally shot himself in the head, prompted animal rights groups to renew their calls for a ban on hunting. The same calls were made in October last year after 20-year-old Marco Tosti was killed after being mistaken for a wild boar by his hunting companion.

Michela Vittoria Brambilla, a former government minister and president of the Italian League for the Defence of Animals and the Environment, said on Sunday: “Enough with this wild west behaviour in the countryside and the forests. The authorities cannot continue to portray the high number of deaths and injuries as something natural and inevitable.”