North YorkshireGunshots shattered the morning stillness on Bransdale Estate, in England’s North York Moors National Park, on April 16, 2020. “It wasn’t the usual bang, bang and a pause to reload, like when men are hunting rabbits,” says a witness who asked to be identified only as Helen because she fears retaliation for speaking out about the incident. “It was six or seven shots in close succession.”

Peering through her binoculars, she says she saw a man grab something off the ground. “It was very clearly a large bird, grayish-brown in color, like a buzzard. The man disappeared behind that boulder,” she says, pointing from where she stands on a country lane toward a large rock on the