A DEER hunter, jailed for keeping an illegal pistol for "dispatching" animals he had brought down, has failed in an Appeal Court bid for freedom.

Hunting enthusiast and gun dealer, Cyrus Shahabi-Shack, aged 58, had a licence for the Ruger .38 revolver, but altered it, making it an illegal weapon.

Cyrus, of Queensgate, Bolton, was convicted of possessing a prohibited firearm at Bolton Crown Court, and jailed for three years in July last year.

Today he asked Sir Brian Leveson, Mr Justice Openshaw and Mr Justice Dove, sitting at London's Criminal Appeal Court, to overturn his conviction.

The court heard that Cyrus, who ran the Lancashire Gunroom, in Bolton, had applied for a licence for the pistol.

He received Home Office permission to buy it, provided that it was altered so as to only take two cartridges.

In compliance with that requirement, the seller of the gun blocked three of its five chambers with steel rods, before passing it to Cyrus.

When police investigating another matter in 2011 examined the gun, they found the barrels had been cleared and re-blocked with loose steel rods — held in with blu-tac.

Cyrus's lawyers today insisted that he had not breached the stipulation of his gun licence.

They argued the loose rods fulfilled the condition and the prosecution case should have been thrown out.

But Sir Brian, dismissing his appeal, said: "There was a case to answer and the judge left it fairly and squarely to the jury."

Arguments that he ought to have been charged with a lesser offence, punishable with a maximum of six months in jail, also failed.