TWO MEN FINED FOR FAILING TO SHOW LICENCES

Grey River Argus, 10 November 1949, Page 6

TWO MEN FINED FOR FAILING TO SHOW LICENCES

For failing to produce game shooting licences when requested to do so by a ranger at Rotomanu on May 7, William Smart, retired, and Charles Rodgers, a cartage contractor, were fined £2 10s and costs by Mr E. A. Lee, S.M., in the Greymouth Magistrates Court yesterday. Robert Roigard, ranger said that on May 7, he heard shots being tired across Lady Lake. Later he saw Rogers and told him he was checking up to which Rodgers replied: "If you do not get out of it you will go into the lake. You know we have licences. Why do you ask for them?" Roigard added that he was not allowed to see the bag or licences, so he left. Roigard denied to counsel (Mr. C. R. McGinley) that he jumped from behind the bushes with a rille in his hands. The defendant, Smart, said that when his boat returned to the shore he saw Riogard was standing about 15 yards away with a rifle in his hands. Roigard had not asked to see the licences. The Magistrate asked the defendant whether he thought Rodger’s offer to throw Roigard in the lake was just a friendly gesture. "Rodgers was probably wild because Roigard was waiting on him,’’ replied Smart. Rodgers said that he had been shooting on the lake for 40 years and he had never been in trouble pre - viously. “I got wild at Riogard for hiding himself in th e flax”, he said. He admitted that he did not have "much use” for Roigaid.