A hunter has avoided conviction for shooting a fellow hunter in the eye, with an expert believing the shot may have bounced off of a duck before it hit him.
Jim Morton was hit in the left eye and the right cheek with shotgun pellets last year.
The hunter, who has name suppression, avoided a charge of careless use of a firearm causing injury in the Palmerston District Court on Friday.
The hunter and Mr Morton were both shooting near Akito in May 2016 when two ducks lifted off the pond.
When the hunter fired two shots, killing both ducks, Mr Morton was also hit.
Mr Morton was 47m to the front and to the right of the hunter. Duck shooters need to be 90m apart on public land, but not on private land.
John Dyer, a former shotgun editor for a NZ hunting magazine, says it's likely a pellet ricocheted off of the ducks' backs.
Steel shot, which was used by the hunter, is known to have bounced off hard surfaces in the past.
But Mr Morton says it's frustrating because the police should have don't their own forensic report.
"The police have got no money to investigate it from the victim's side", he told Fairfax. "It's a hard pill to swallow."
Police told Mr Morton they didn't have the money in their budget to do so.
Mr Morton still has a piece of shotgun pellet in his head, two millimetres from his brain, that is too dangerous to remove.
The sport is notorious for accidents, with NZ Mountain Safety Council’s CEO Mike Daisley putting out a warning ahead of this year’s season thanks to "a lot of very close calls."
Newshub.
