An Indigenous man convicted of hunting on private land near Swift Current had the decision overturned by the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal.

Kristjan Pierone was found guilty on the charge stemming from when he shot a bull moose on September 30, 2015. 

But the province's highest court of appeal, in a decision by Justice Neal Caldwell in concurrence with Justices Lian Schwann and Georgina Jackson, quashed the Court of Queen's Bench's conviction. 

Pierone, a Treaty 5 First Nations man from Manitoba that lives an works in the Swift Current area, was originally found not guilty in Swift Current Provincial Court.

Caldwell sided with the trial judge that Pierone, beyond a reasonable doubt, did not know the slough the moose was in that he shot was being "visibly put to a use that was incompatible with Mr. Pierone’s exercise of his Treaty right to hunt."