AUBURN – A Lewiston man cited for not labeling gift moose meat told a judge Tuesday he wants his day in court.

Wayne Hood is scheduled to appear next week in Androscoggin County Superior Court for jury selection. He plans to represent himself.

Prosecutors offered to settle the case with a $100 fine for the Class E misdemeanor, but Hood said no, preferring to let a jury decide.

“I don’t care about the 100 bucks,” he said afterward. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

Hood was ticketed last fall after a warden came to his home seeking illegal deer, Hood said in an interview last week. When the warden asked to peer into Hood’s freezer, the longtime hunter gave him the OK.

The warden didn’t find any deer, but he discovered dozens of packages of moose meat given to him by a friend, Hood said.

The warden instructed Hood to properly label the shrink-wrapped bags. As he left, the warden pointed to the identification number etched on a blue plastic tag dangling from a moose antler mounted on Hood’s wall, he said.

Hood called his friend and got the registration number from the moose kill then recorded it in black marker on every bag, he said.

Four hours after the warden left, he was back at Hood’s home. This time he wrote Hood a summons for not labeling his gift game meat.

Had the warden cited him the first time he noticed the unmarked meat, Hood said he would have paid the fine and let it go.

Hood said he shouldn’t have been written up after he complied with the warden’s instructions.

A spokesman for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife said in an interview that the law is clear: Gift game meat must be labeled with the name of the hunter who registered it, along with the year it was shot. That way, said Col. Thomas Santaguida, wardens are able to keep track of which animals are shot legally and which are shot illegally.