A man who brutally bashed a kangaroo to death with a crowbar with another man near Bunbury will spend almost a year behind bars.
Craig Jamie House and Vance Geoffrey Jarvis, who represented themselves in court, both pleaded guilty in the Bunbury Magistrates Court on Tuesday to ill-treatment of an animal, according to the ABC.
Mr House was jailed for 11 months' while Jarvis was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine.
It's believed to be the first ever jail sentence for someone charged with animal cruelty in WA.
The court was shown confronting video footage of the kangaroos' death in June 2015, which police found on a computer after raiding a home on an unrelated matter.
The video showed the two men and a dog collaring the kangaroo into a dam before House strikes the roo with a crowbar before dragging the animal's lifeless body from the dam.
Magistrate Evan Shackleton said House struck the first blow to the kangaroo and instructed Jarvis to join in, according to the ABC.
"Sneak out to it man, as soon as it lunges 'boosh', take ya thongs off," House can be heard yelling to Jarvis.
House told the court he killed the kangaroo for food because he had fallen on hard times and used the metal bar because his gun license was confiscated two years earlier.
"I tried to put out the roo in the most humanely way I could," House told the court.
The magistrate disagreed with House claiming there were "large elements of animal cruelty".
"In my view, you were having fun tormenting that kangaroo," he said.
RSPCA WA chief executive David van Ooran told the ABC it was it was "incredibly rare" for someone to be given a jail term for animal cruelty.
"I can't think of a time in recent years and decades where this has occurred," Mr van Ooran said.
"This is a very strong penalty and a very appropriate penalty ... it was clearly a horrific and sickening act against a defenceless animal, behaviour like this is completely unacceptable.
"It's excellent to see that the magistrate in this case has awarded a prison term."
