PERTH — Two farmers have been convicted of hunting deer without a licence, although both men say they don’t own guns, have never hunted and one was sleeping in his truck at the time of the hunt.

Lanark County crop farmer John Vanderspank, 51, was fined $600 in Perth provincial court Sept. 29. Dairy farmer Larry Reid, 45, of Renfrew received a suspended sentence.

Both men were charged at Vanderspank’s farm June 19, 2004, at what was called the Second Annual Father’s Day Nuisance Deer Harvest.

Ministry of Natural Resources conservation officers were out in full force to catch Vander-spank, who has been fighting the MNR for several years over obtaining deer tags to shoot deer. He told the court that deer damage up to $40,000 in crops a year on his 1,000 acres.

Vanderspank has been involved in at least two protests at Kemptville in which he and members of the Lanark Landowners Association shut down the MNR regional office for an entire day by barricading the doors with hay bales and tractors. They demanded MNR speed up the bureaucracy in handing out deer tags.

In retaliation, on the day of the hunt, 12 conservation officers, including airplane surveillance and an officer with a dog, were looking for illegal hunters. They found one hunter, who did not have a licence and didn’t fire his gun, on Vanderspank’s property. They then charged Vanderspank, because he organized the hunt and Reid, who was found sleeping in his truck, because he brought the hunter to the farm.

The MNR brought in Toronto lawyer Alan Ryan to nail Vanderspank using the uncommon argument that both farmers are guilty because they were "aiding and abetting" another man to hunt.