The moment hunters shoot at French vegan animal rights protesters who stepped in front of stag to try and save it

This is the moment hunters purportedly shot at vegan animal rights activists as they tried to save a wild stag in France. The clip, filmed in Castelnau-de-Montmiral in southern France’s Tarn department, shows campaigners trying to put themselves between the exhausted animal and a pack of dogs.

At one point gunshots can be heard in the footage before one of the activists shouts ‘he is firing at us with a rifle, the b*****d!’

Amid tense scenes, a male voice can then be heard shouting in French: ‘The first who comes near is dead!’

The video cuts to a hunter holding what looks like a gun and saying to the activists: ‘The first one to touch the dogs is dead!’

The hunter shouts: ‘I don’t give a f**k if I’m being filmed! You’re touching the dogs! You’re hitting them! I’m just protecting my dogs!’

One of the activists replies: ‘We are not hitting the dogs. We are here for the animals.’

The clip then shows protesters standing over the stag, with the animal having apparently died of exhaustion. ‘It’s dead. It’s dead,’ one of them says.

The footage, posted online by French comedian and animal activist Remi Gaillard, starts with someone shouting: ‘There’s the deer! There it is!’

Dogs can be heard barking in the background as the activists run to try to catch up with the stag shouting ‘No! No! No!’.

After catching up with it one of the protesters says: ‘OK, mate, OK, get out of here.’

Many have taken to social media to share their opinion of the video after Gaillard shared it on Twitter.

One said: ‘I do not like Remy Gailard’s sense of humour, but in this, I support him 100 percent.’

Another added: ‘These f*****g aristocrats are really p*****g us off with their hunting from a bygone era.’

A third said: ‘Hunters in France represent two per cent of the population. Two per cent who p**s everyone else off on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.’