£50 FINE FOR SHOOTER

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28981, 24 August 1959, Page 12

£50 FINE FOR SHOOTER

Exceeded Limit Bags

For Ducks

(New Zealand Press Association) DUNEDIN, August 23.

Breaches of the Wild Life Regulations brought fines amountin j to £5O and costs for Richard Sinclair of Waihola, in the Magistrate’s Court at Milton when he appeared on five charges of exceeding the limit bag, shooting game not in flight and obstructing the police and rangers. The offences took place at the opening of the duck shooting season on a private lagoon on Sinclair’s farm at Titri, 25 miles south of Dunedin. Sinclair (Mr B. Newlove) pleaded guilty. Mr R. J. Henderson appeared for the Otago Acclimatisation Society. Mr J. D. Willis, S.M., was on the Bench.

Sinclair had been watched by rangers through binoculars on opening day, said Mr Henderson. He was seen to shoot 34 ducks and after acquiring this number, he shot at another 42, killing 31. On the same day the rangers saw Sinclair fire 22 shots at ducks on the water, killing 16 ducks. All his equipment and the ducks hed been seized on this occasion. On the following Saturday the rangers observed him shoot another 21 ducks —six over the limit. When he was approached by rangers to be apprehended, he had made off.

Two Milton men, Gordon Stevenson and his son, William Brian Stevenson, were each fined £lO for shooting at ducks on the water, the son killing seven and the father, 13.