SPORTSMEN’S RIGHTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22258, 10 May 1934, Page 2

SPORTSMEN’S RIGHTS

FARMERS’ POWERS OF EXCLUSION “ Have farmers who lease river-beds power to prevent shooters from using such property,” ’ was a question asked at a meeting of the council of the South Canterbury Acclimatisation Society on Monday night by Mr L. B. James. Recently, said Mr James, advertisements had appeared from lessees of riverbed land warning persons against going over it under penalty of prosecution for trespass. The point was that if the shooters were kept off the river-beds there was nowhere else for them to go in many cases, and consequently they were subjected to hardship. It was making the laws of New Zealand like those of England, where a man could not go anywhere without trespassing. The question should be taken up by the society in the interests of sportsmen, as it did not seem to him right that a man who paid a shilling an acre for the lease of river-bed should be able to keep others off it. He knew of a case of a man who would not allow shooting on the river-bed as it frightened the ducks away from an adjoining pond. The chairman (Mr J. McDonald) said that the matter would carry more weight if it were taken up by a conference. There were two sides to the question, he said. One was that if men were given the right to shoot over river-beds they might interfere with the poisoning of rabbits, which had to be carried out in quiet conditions. In his opinion, however, a shooter had the same right to the use of a river-bed as a fisherman, and there was, he believed, a public right-of-way one chain wide on each side of a stream, but beyond one chain a man had no right to go. It was decided, in order to get an authoritative statement on the question, that a committee consisting of Messrs J. Stevens, C. 11. Coxhead, E. MTlonald, and James should wait on Mr W. Stewart, commissioner of Crown lands, who is expected to visit Timaru this week."