Scott Guy had a shotgun wound to his neck, just below his chin, which destroyed 6 centimetres of his carotid artery, a pathologist has told the jury.

Guy was shot twice in his driveway on July 8, 2010 at 4.43am. The Crown says Ewen Macdonald, his brother-in-law, shot him over tensions about the future of the family farm in Feilding.

Macdonald has pleaded not guilty and is on trial in the High Court at Wellington. The Crown evidence is expected to finish this week.

A piece of shotgun wadding was found embedded in his neck next to his voice box.

Forensic pathologist Dr John Rutherford has begun outlining Guy's injuries.

He performed an autopsy on Guy the day after he was killed.

Dr Rutherford said the main wound was to the chin and neck and extended from the left of the chin and extended to the right side of the voice box.

Guy's jaw was fractured and the bone fragmented.

Dr Rutherford said there were multiple round and oval marks made by pellets on the front of the neck.

The marks showed the pellets were moving up toward the chin and caused damage to his eyes.

Pellet marks were found on the underside of one of his arms.

During the internal examination Dr Rutherford said one pellet had gone up through the mouth, cheek and eye to the brain.

The bulk of the pellet mass was found in the mid to lower portion of the neck, he said.

Under cross examination he told defence lawyer Greg King it was his view that all the injuries could be explained by one shotgun discharge but said he could not exclude more than one discharge.

The pellet marks to his arm could be explained by Guy throwing his arm up during the incident.

Dr Rutherford said there could be three impacts as all the pellets look the same.

To distinguish them he would have to see patterns of pellets and there were none on Guy's body.

He told King he could not say death was instanteous but that Guy was disabled within seconds.

He was also able to say that Guy could already have been on the ground when the shot was fired.

There were no powder burns on the skin and no contact wound but the shotgun wad in Guy's neck indicated the shot was made from close by, Dr Rutherford said.

SMALL AMOUNT OF BLOOD ON BARREL

Blood testing was done on the Guy family farm shotgun after a tiny amount of blood was found on the barrel.

ESR forensic scientist David Neale said there was also a tiny amount of staining on the barrel. He said there was either not enough to test for human DNA or it was not human.

Instead the stains were sent to Australia to test if it was canine blood. He said it was not.

No blood staining was found on the shoulder stock or the trigger.

Neale returned to the stand to give evidence about blood at the scene where Guy's body was found.

He examined the driveway on Guy's property and assisted with the removal of the body.

Neale said there was blood staining on the ground under the top half of Guy's body and had started to flow into the rut made by the gate and into one of the footprint impressions.

There was also a cap lying in a pool of blood near Guy.

Blood stains were found on the right leg of Guy's trousers and on ground near his right shin.

He said after luminol testing to show where blood might be, there were no other areas seen on the ground.

Neale said there was heavy blood staining on the right leg of Guy's trousers along with blood splatter.

Eight impressions from gates were taken and Neale said they appeared to be from gloves.  They were made by riding gloves.

Twenty two DNA samples were received from people in the case, including the Guy family, Macdonald and Scott Guy’s two sons.

A sample was also taken from Guy during the post-mortem.

ESR Forensic scientist Jayshree Patel received samples from around the Aorangi Rd properties and tested them for human DNA.

She said the shotgun itself did not have any confirmed human DNA on it, while the trigger had a mixed result that included Guy and Macdonald, along with others.

The jury has heard the gun was used by several people, including Macdonald, in the weeks after Guy was killed.

Swabs were taken from concrete posts near the gates of Guy's property, fences, and the main gates. However only trace amounts of DNA were found on some of them.

Five samples taken from Guy's clothing showed DNA found in blood stains could have come from Guy.

Patel said there was unidentified DNA was found on Guy's trousers.

She confirmed to defence lawyer Peter Coles that the only DNA from Macdonald was on the trigger of the shotgun.

FARM 'NOT BIG ENOUGH'

Macdonald talked to his wife about having to move to another farm as the Guy family farm was too small for three families.

After Guy's parent's had come back from an ICE Bridge conference - which was only days before the shooting - Macdonald talked to his wife Anna about how the farm was not big enough to support them all.

Macdonald said he was concerned since they had as much land as they could lease and they needed to look at other ways to make money.

One of the ways would be for Guy or Ewen Macdonald to go to another farm to manage.

Anna Macdonald said they were reluctant to leave the farm. She did not want to move and would prefer to stay and run the diary unit on the family farm.

She said she spoke to her mother who assured her nothing was going to change and when she told Macdonald, he seemed happy with that.

"I said to him 'look, I wouldn't panic'."

Her parents had come back from the conference excited about ideas and had planned to meet with all of them to talk about it.

It was the last time Anna Macdonald was needed back before the jury to give evidence.

Scott Guy's father Bryan told the court that either Ewen Macdonald or Scott Guy's skills could have been used to manage another farm.

Bryan Guy said he and his wife came back from the conference with the idea that one of the two men might go manage another farm.

He said the conference was to help decide the direction of the business and what their future would be in the business.

He and his wife intended to talk to both men about it but they never got the chance to talk to them indepth.

Bryan Guy said they were throwing around ideas and he had shown a possible growth plan to both men.

One of the long term ideas was for a recreational lake and Scott Guy was enthusiast about it, the court heard.

"Scott was quite keen on the idea,'' Bryan Guy said.

He said the family farm was struggling with three management salaries going out and there was an opportunity to use their skills to manage another person's farm, or lease a farm, or sharemilk.

The idea was to bring income back to the family farm and would not necessarily mean anyone had to move.

Bryan Guy said he knew Ewen Macdonald had concerns about long term milking on the farm and when he heard that he tried to talk to him to alleviate those fears.

BOOT EVIDENCE RAISES QUESTIONS

A forensic scientist says the size-nine Proline boot he saw could not have made the impressions at Scott Guy's murder scene.

The Crown has told the jury footprint impressions around Guy's body were made by size-nine Proline dive boots with a distinctive rippled sole. They say Macdonald owned the boots that made the prints.

However, this morning the jury heard the size-nine boot that was examined had fewer wavy rows than the rows counted from casts at the scene. Police have not found the dive boots that made the impressions at the scene.

Forensic scientist David Neale agreed there were 32-33 rows on the three casts he had counted and the size-nine Proline boot he had as a sample had fewer than that, between 29 and 30.

Neale told King he did not measure Macdonald's bare foot impressions. Going on purely the length of the foot, Neal said he would not like to say what size shoe they would fit.

He said he would need to know the other dimensions of the foot and the boot.

He agreed the dive boots were flexible.

Neale counted out the number of lines on the size-nine boot in court, counting between 29 and 30 rows. He added that one at the very tip of the boot may or may not make an impression.

Neal agreed there was not one whole impression he could use to create the measurements.

Neale said he made the assumption that all the prints had come from one single pair of boots but without further evidence he could not say if his assumption was correct.

He said he had to use the best heel impression and the best impression of the front of the boot to get the measurements and they were a "calculated guess''.

Neale agreed that each size appeared to have two more rows of wavy lines.

King said if his calculation was correct there was no way in the world it could be a size-nine boot.

Neale said: "The size nine boot did not have 32-33 rows of waves, I can't say what size the boot was that created the casts at the scene.''

He had previously said he had measured it as between size nine and 10.

King said in terms of length and the number of wave patterns that would suggest quite strongly that a size 11 or 12 was used to make the impressions.

Neale said the rows of waves were made by a boot he had not seen, which may or may not be a Proline boot.

He said the size-nine Proline boot he had seen could not have made the impressions.

Neale told Crown prosecutor Ben Vanderkolk that "toe roll" could lengthen the boot's impression as the foot rolled forward with a step.

He said the manufacturing of the shoes could make a difference depending on where the die cutter is placed on the sheet of rubber to cut out the sole.

Neale only had a sample boot to work with.

Whanganui farm manager Laurence Patterson said Ewen Macdonald, who he had hunted with, had a pair of dive boots.

He said they used them around the camp, put them on after they took off their hunting boots.

He described them as easy to pack and comfortable.

Patterson said he knew some used them to hunt in to be quiet although he did not.

"I kept falling over in mine,'' he told the jury to a burst of laughter.

He remembered the boots on trips in 2005 to Stewart Island.

DIVE BOOT MAY HAVE BEEN THROWN OUT

Anna Macdonald has again told her husband's lawyer that she can not remember throwing out an old dive boot.
"I wish I could remember.''

She told King that she could not remember physically throwing out a boot, but assumed she would not have wanted to take it with her to the homestead. The couple were taking it over from her parents, Bryan and Jo Guy.

"I am assuming I threw it on the trailer because I wouldn't want one old tatty boot at the new house.''

She also told King that there had been no firm decisions made after the conference her parents came back from and she had not thought there was anything to worry about.

BOOTS SIMILAR, MEASUREMENTS OUT

Neale said initially he had made a cast of another type of dive boot and found the characteristics held similarities but the measurements were out.

He said he was able to tell police they should be looking for a dive boot and police found three pairs of Proline boots for him to test, along with a single size-nine boot.

He said the characteristics he had been looking for were all present in the Proline boots he was given to test.

The heels were about the same size and the difference in sizes were mainly shown in the front of the boot.

He made impressions in soil to replicate the type of impressions at the crime scene which were held up to be shown to the jury including one made by a size nine boot.

Neale told the court he compiled characteristics from the impressions cast at the scene, assuming they were all from the same shoe.

He said the overall characteristics were a wavy pattern 8mm in length across the sole, with 5.5mm between the lines.

A label was noticeable and the sole was attached to the upper and was thick.

Its edge held a multiple diamond pattern.

"We look at a lot of footwear impressions and often look at an impression and know what it is," he said.

Neale said the impression was out of the ordinary.

He contacted overseas experts in Canada, Australia, the UK and the US and asked for databases to be searched, however none of them came up with a match.

He was told it was more than likely a type of dive boot and would be unlikely to be on the databases.

PRINTS SHOWED BOOTS WERE OLDER

Neale told the court he found the prints made at the scene were likely made by an old pair of boots.

The impressions he made from sample boots showed a sharp wavy-lined impression. The older boots he tested had lines that had flattened off with use.

The Crown has told the jury Macdonald's boots were bought years before Scott Guy's shooting.

Neale came out of the witness box to hold up plaster casts to show the jury the differences in the impressions.

He said on a sample worn boot the wavy lines began to look "squashed".

Measurements of the plaster casts showed the boot that made them was between a size nine and 10.

Neale said all the casts were measured as none of the plaster casts of the footprint gave one complete cast.

He ruled out sizes seven and 11 as too small and too big.

A defence exhibit of ink impressions of Ewen Macdonald's feet were shown to Neale.

He said it was not helpful because the ink impressions were of Macdonald's unrestrained foot rather than with a shoe. Neale agreed not having a full impression meant there were some limitations.

"All we can say is if the foot fits within the boundary of the cast, not whether the foot could fit the shoe, only whether it is larger or smaller than the cast.''

He said the only thing he could say was that if the foot was significantly larger than the shoe, it was unlikely it could wear that shoe.

"It [the ink impression of Macdonald's feet] fit in the boundaries of size nine, 10 and 11 and fit inside the boundaries of the casts made from the scene,'' Neale said.

He added that it was possible to wear a dive boot that was too small because they could stretch.

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