Wielding shotguns, dressed in camouflage and walking through fields, several hunters were caught on camera last week, ahead of the open season, by BirdLife volunteers who were subjected to violent attacks and threats.
But one clip released to the press stood out from the rest - where BirdLife volunteer Paul Debono and an Italian birdwatcher could be seen in Dingli being threatened, pushed and kicked by two men in a field last Sunday.
"Get out of here. I will kill you, go in (sic) your country," the men are heard shouting to the birdwatchers.
Mr Debono says there was nothing to suggest the land they were on was private and the aggressors appeared out of nowhere in a pick-up truck and started attacking immediately.
Speaking during a press conference yesterday, Mr Debono said their camera, which recorded the incident, was taken by the hunters and all the data was erased.
However, the hunters apparently deposited it at a police station where it was given back to Birdlife and the data was retrieved using "special software".
It will now be sent back to the police as evidence and a report will be filed. But Birdlife claims this is just one of many incidents in which its volunteers were attacked and no one was brought to justice.
President of BirdLife Joseph Mangion explained that over the past week, the NGO's volunteers noted 744 shots being fired as well as 474 "illegalities".
He said the true scale of illegal hunting could not be known since BirdLife could not cover the whole of the islands during its spring watch.
The six-day hunting season, set to open on Saturday, would make the rampant and blatant illegal hunting even more impossible to supervise and take action on, especially due to an under resourced police force, he added.
Mr Mangion explained that while those who hunted illegally could walk around with impunity, Birdlife volunteers were being targeted, their property vandalised and xenophobic threats left for them.
He accused the government of lacking the political will to invest in law enforcement rather than appeasing the "aggressive hunting lobby".
Last Saturday, he said, a car being used by a BirdLife volunteer had its windscreen blown off by a shotgun. The incident happened in front of the Manikata church only 20 metres away from a children's playground.
Meanwhile, death threats and hate messages were spray painted with words such as "You are going to pay for this".
Mr Mangion denied that volunteers had provoked hunters, an accusation made this week by the hunters' federation.
Meanwhile, UK police officer Steve Downing criticised the law enforcement situation in Malta, saying that it had deteriorated over the past three years and would not improve unless the government beefed up the police force. He said that most of the time when an active crime was being reported, the police arrived too late or not at all.