Multiple high school football players from New Hampshire are facing various punishments going into this year’s season after a video surfaced of them abusing a duck at football camp.

The boys attend Kennett High School in North Conway, the Conway Daily Sun reported.

Kevin Jordan, chief of law enforcement with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, said the video shows the boys luring wild ducks toward them with food. One of the boys then hits a duck — nearly fatally — with a broomstick, he said.

Jordan said the video doesn’t show that there was another boy who intervened and strangled the duck to end its life as humanely as possible.


WMUR reported the indecent happened a couple of weeks ago while the boys were at camp in Moultonborough, but Jordan said he wasn’t sure when it happened.

Jordan said while his department decided not to punish the boys for various reasons, their school acted swiftly and immediately conducted an investigation into what happened.

Each of the football players was suspended from playing in one to five games based on their involvement in the incident, Jordan said. They were also ordered to serve 20 hours of community service involving the care of animals. He said the school is looking into whether there were any “emotional challenges” that they should be concerned about regarding the abuse.

“In my experience, kids will do things differently in a group than what they will do on their own,” Jordan said. “But it’s horrendous what they did. Absolutely horrendous.”

Jordan said he asked the school’s principal why he wouldn’t throw the boys off of the football team, and the principal explained that district rules dictate that if the players were thrown off of the team, they wouldn’t be allowed to participate in other clubs or organizations for the rest of their high school careers. He told Jordan that could prevent them from getting into college.


“We felt, looking at this, that the kids who did the act were being properly addressed by the school, which was refreshing,” Jordan said. “Law enforcement’s goal is not to punish people. Our goal is to change their behavior.”

He said the school’s punishments were more comprehensive than anything his department could have done in this case.

“It’s more than they would get out of a courtroom,” he said.

Kevin Richard, superintendent of Kennett’s district, said a press release regarding the incident would be circulated following Monday night’s school board meeting.