A local politician and wildlife hunter was shot and killed by a hunting trap in the remote mountains of the Philippines, making him the fourth human victim of the "improvised shotgun traps" now used by hunters in the high-elevation forests 250 miles north of Manila.

UPDATE: The original report doesn't make clear which hunter set the trap. We have corrected this post to reflect that.

The hunter and former small town mayor, Donald Alubia, was killed by a trap sometime after January 16, the news website InterAksyon.com reports. That's when Alubia and two companions entered the wilderness. When Alubia did not return to camp, a search began.

After villagers carried his body down from the mountainside, an autopsy revealed four shotgun pellets had struck Alubia at close range. Hypothermia was also a factor, as the hunter was shot and then bled to death in below-freezing temperatures at an elevation of nearly 9,000 feet.

At his funeral yesterday in the Mountain Province, his relative Ruth Batane said the new shotgun traps had hurt two local hunters and killed another two, including Donald Alubia. The danger, she said, is in the new practice of adding a loaded shotgun to indigenous traps that have been used here for millennia.

[Photo of Mountain Province, Philippines, via Wikipedia Commons.]