A senior Victorian magistrate is facing criminal charges after allegedly engaging in illegal duck hunting.

Co-ordinating magistrate William Gibb was recently charged with breaching the state’s Wildlife Act by investigators from the Victorian Department of Environment and Primary Industries.

He is accused of hunting for wood ducks during a banned period.

Mr Gibb has been ordered to appear before Wangaratta Magistrate’s Court in July where he faces a maximum fine of $3500.

The magistrate recently announced he was retiring, telling the Bendigo Advertiser that he had noticed a creeping lack of respect for the law and the courts system.

“We had respect for our parents, respect for our elders, respect for our teachers, we respected police people — I don’t even have to make a comment as to what some young people in society these days think of any one of those,” he told the Advertiser.

“The court used to be the last bastion where people might modify their behaviour, but even in the last few years you can see the challenges now being made to the court.”

In March, Mr Gibb convicted a California Gully man who did not treat a dog with a suspicious castration wound, of failing to provide vet care and ordered him to pay $1200 plus costs.

The man said the dog had either sustained the wound by jumping over a fence or before he had bought the dog three weeks earlier.

A vet’s inspection found that the wound was “not an accidental incident and had occurred with intent”.