Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Search op­er­a­tions are con­tin­u­ing for 49-year-old Paul Cam­po, who went miss­ing dur­ing a hunt­ing ex­pe­di­tion in the Guayagua­yare for­est on Sat­ur­day.

Cam­po went to an area known as Main­field on Fri­day night with a friend from Va­len­cia. It was his first time hunt­ing in the area.

On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, they were joined by sev­er­al oth­er hunters who were fa­mil­iar with the ter­rain.

Ac­cord­ing to his friend, around 2.30 pm on Sat­ur­day, the group had fin­ished hunt­ing for the day and was head­ing back to their camp­site. How­ev­er, they stopped a short dis­tance away to wait for the oth­er hunters to emerge from the for­est. Af­ter the re­main­ing hunters ar­rived, Cam­po’s friend walked back to the camp ahead of the group.

Short­ly af­ter, he heard the men call­ing out to Cam­po and was in­formed that Cam­po had walked back in­to the for­est alone.

The friend said Cam­po ap­peared nor­mal at the time and did not in­di­cate that he was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing any dif­fi­cul­ty or dis­tress.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, the friend said he had no ex­pla­na­tion for why Cam­po de­cid­ed to ven­ture off by him­self, not­ing that Cam­po was an ex­pe­ri­enced hunter but had nev­er hunt­ed alone.

He added that Cam­po was al­so un­fa­mil­iar with the Main­field area, in­creas­ing con­cern for his safe­ty.

Search ef­forts be­gan im­me­di­ate­ly and con­tin­ued late in­to Sat­ur­day night, with hunters us­ing hunt­ing tech­niques, in­clud­ing shout­ing, fir­ing shots and blow­ing through gun bar­rels.

Those ef­forts proved un­suc­cess­ful. About 15 to 20 vil­lagers and hunters ex­pand­ed the search on Sun­day, cov­er­ing large sec­tions of the for­est.

Search par­ties al­so re­turned to the area again yes­ter­day, but Cam­po was not lo­cat­ed.

Al­though a re­port has been made to the po­lice, the friend said they have not yet re­ceived as­sis­tance from the po­lice or the army.

Cap­tain Val­lence Ramb­harat of the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team said he was con­tact­ed about the miss­ing hunter on Sun­day night, but was un­able to join the search yes­ter­day morn­ing due to a pri­or com­mit­ment. He said he was fa­mil­iar with the Guayagua­yare for­est and in­tend­ed to join the search if Cam­po is not found.

Mean­while, he ap­pealed to hunters who know the Main­field area to as­sist in the on­go­ing search.