Have Any of You Observed a Wildlife Law Violation ? What Did you Do ?

[OntarioHunter]

You said it. Long ago, I remember because I couldnt believe you said it. Yah no one ever sees a loner. Loners are actually the easiest birds to decoy imo. Give me a break.

Ducks yes, geese no. You would know that if you'd actually hunted them much. Honkers mate for life and the family unit usually stays intact through the first migration. Thus, the only loners you'll see are old ones without families that have lost their mate or young ones that have somehow lost the family unit. The latter are a little easier to decoy but not much. They are looking for specific geese with a distinctive call. I may see upwards of a thousand geese in the air during any morning at peak migration. Lucky if I see half a dozen loners.

FYI I haven't been on this forum since "long ago." Not even since last hunting season.

 

[Nick87]

I hate it when it happens but I won't leave birds in the field which seems to be the usual solution for these mishaps.

^^Just to clarify you wont leave birds in the field that were killed due to the fact you didnt take a clean shot because thats wrong?

When an elk is shot for the same exact reason you can justify leaving it because you already had enough elk meat and/or paying a fine didnt meet your budget?

 

[OntarioHunter]

^^Just to clarify you wont leave birds in the field that were killed due to the fact you didnt take a clean shot because thats wrong?

When an elk is shot for the same exact reason you can justify leaving it because you already had enough elk meat and/or paying a fine didnt meet your budget?

You clearly have some serious reading comprehension issues. I never left any meat of any sort in the field. And you obviously know zilch about waterfowl hunting or the regs. Stop trying to be clever. You don't have sufficient equipment. Not enough gun.

 

[Nick87]

You have some serious reading comprehension issues. I never left any meat of any sort in the field. And you obviously know zilch about waterfowl hunting or the regs. Stop trying to be clever. You don't have sufficient equipment. Not enough gun.

Are you done editing that yet?

 

[Nick87]

You have some serious reading comprehension issues. I never left any meat of any sort in the field. And you obviously know zilch about waterfowl hunting or the regs. Stop trying to be clever. You don't have sufficient equipment. Not enough gun.

Not trying to be clever. I misread your original post about leaving the elk. As to what you posted the game warden said he thought you did. Maybe your using too much gun for the geese too? I'm just trying to help it sounds like you need it.

 

[OntarioHunter]

Not trying to be clever. I misread your original post about leaving the elk. As to what you posted the game warden said he thought you did. Maybe your using too much gun for the geese too? I'm just trying to help it sounds like you need it.

And you keep on misreading it. The game warden said nothing about what he thought I did. Another swing and a miss. For geese I shoot 3" twelve gauge 1 1/8 oz steel BB @ 1550 fps. Me and about a jillion other guys. Very popular. Very effective. Just trying to help since you clearly know nothing about goose hunting.

 

[OntarioHunter]

Are you done editing that yet?

Clearly.

 

[JLS]

A phrase my grandfather used to use comes to mind, some all along the lines of “crazier than a shit house rat”.

 

[rtraverdavis]

Well, this got weird. Good old Ontario.

As for the OP, I’ve only had occasion to call in one big game violation, which was in Wyoming this past fall. Group of guys in a Suburban shooting at running mule deer does off the road. Watched the whole thing through my binoculars from about a mile off, so unfortunately didn’t have much to tell the warden besides what they were driving and how many guys there were. No idea if they were caught. It was pretty gross to watch.

Saw and reported numerous fishing violations on the Deschutes back when I used to spend so much of my time on the river. There was one I didn’t report and still regret—when a guide I used to work with struck out on his own and started guiding without an outfitter’s license. For a time he was sort of a fishing mentor to me and, even though I knew what he was doing was wrong, I couldn’t bring myself to turn him in. He ended up killing himself late that fall and getting a pretty well-publicized article written about him in Outside Magazine. The man had some serious demons, and I’ve wondered if his fate would have been different if I or the many other people who knew what he’d been up to had stepped in and reported him. Like I wrote before, a regret.

 

[cur dog]

A buddy and I hunted an antelope unit in central Wyoming a few years ago. We hunted opening day, in an area with lots of public land. I was blown away by the number of people we saw shooting from inside vehicles or while standing in the road. We could have spent all day reporting various violations. We talked with a real nice young warden late in the day. I told him about some of the things we had seen earlier. He wasn’t shocked at all. His response was, “ we deal with a very entitled group of people around here.”

 

[F250]

I too have a couple. When I was 12, I was jump shooting ducks along a small stream. As I rounded a bend, a flock of Greenwing Teal jumped off the water. I fired one shot. Five ducks fell. The Limit was 4 ducks that year. I killed the two cripples, carried all 5 back home, and cleaned them. When my father got home, I self reported to him. We had a long discussion : The bad - I needed to consider better target acquisition, and never "flock shoot" birds. The good - I didn't hide anything, and didn't just toss the extra bird into the woods. My hunting license was suspended for a few weeks.

When I was 16, a buddy and I had a duck blind in a State owned marsh next to a private marsh. We watched the guys in the private marsh kill over their limits several days. We suspected the marsh was also baited judging by the way the ducks pounded in there. I called the authorities. The guy, let's call him Bill, that leased the marsh was arrested for several violations. A couple years later I was with a some friends in a local chit-hole bar (drinking age was 18 back then). I felt this huge paw land on my shoulder. It was Bill. Bill was 6'7", weighed 320 lbs. and worked heavy construction. He also did 2 tours in Viet Nam humping an M-60 machine gun. Bill said," are you the little Fck who turned me in to the Feds "? I had no place to run and couldn't have anyway as my legs turned to Jello !! I confessed that I was the one. Bill let go and took a step back. I thought I was in for a whoopin !! He said, " I just wanted to know if you had the balls to tell me to my face". He turned to the bar tender, told her to give me a beer, and walked away. Years later we became friends. He sponsored me when I joined the Masons.

After I retired I was hunting deer in a neighboring state. I found a tree stand over looking a bait pile on a farm where I had permission. Baiting is illegal in this state. No one else had permission to be on this farm. I called the local Warden. His investigation found the violator was a State Trooper.

 

[SaskHunter]

About 20 years or so ago I self reported on a black tail doe in Cali. Missed the buck and hit the doe. Drug it a mile out and then drove another 20+ miles to a pay phone. Waited over an hour for a warden to arrive. They took the doe, my deer tag and gave me a ticket. Had I not been active duty at the time I’d have ended up in jail the judge said. Wanted to give me 6 months in jail and a $5k fine. Judge ended up giving me 6 months probation and a $200 fine. He also took my hunting license for the year.

This is silly! You did the right thing by self-reporting but go the book thrown at you? This is not how you encourage hunters to be honest. Mistakes do happen and being punished in such a way after doing the right thing does nothing but deter others to confess to wildlife crimes.

A buddy of mine shot a small cow moose on a Bull or calf only license. He f'ed up, dragged the small cow moose out of the bush and turned himself in. He was hit with a $2000 fine, lost all tags and got a hunting prohibition for two years. Do you really think this guy will report anything ever again? My FIL shot a beautiful whitetail buck on the rifle opener, turns out, the buck had been poached/shot in the brisket weeks before and was if very bad shape. He called the CO's, they showed up and seized the entire deer as "evidence" including the rack and took his buck tag. He was left with no tag and no deer for again doing the right thing. He told them straight up though, "do you really think I will report wildlife violations in the future now that I know I will lose everything?". A few weeks later a CO he knows very well dropped off the sawed off antlers at the house in some secret drug deal... Ridiculous...

Honesty IS best policy. Losing your tag(s) and losing the animal should be the most you get for self-reporting, otherwise you just encourage people to SSS.

Back on topic; I've called the CO's three times for injured animals, one had been poached (shot in the ass before hunting season), one had been most likely legally shot but injured in the leg (its front knee joint was a 360 pivot with he foreleg flailing around) and the last was either a sick/injured mule deer fawn that was blind with apparent head trauma just chilling 1 foot from a busy road. Other than that, I see a lot of poaching related offences like cut fences or trespassing, I've never reported those as the landowners normally don't want to deal with that and would rather fix the fence or let them roam around. One offence I see often is the lack of orange (or white, yellow and red which are legal here), I don't report it but instead tell the person a sarcastic comment if I get a chance.

 

[SaskHunter]

You clearly have some serious reading comprehension issues. I never left any meat of any sort in the field. And you obviously know zilch about waterfowl hunting or the regs. Stop trying to be clever. You don't have sufficient equipment. Not enough gun.

You, yourself, know nothing about bag limit. If you are talking about Ontario, it has Daily Bag and Possession Limits. Shooting more than your bag limit, going home to drop off your "first daily bag limit", than going back to the field to get your "second daily bag limit" IS poaching.

Stop defending what you are doing. Sure, there's no limit on possession, but there is a daily bag limit which you admit to breaking...

Stop dude, just stop. Every time you post on here it's either to make some rude comments about someone's hunt, what they shoot, trophy or taxidermy and now you're adding admitting to wildlife offences that aren't offences according to @OntarioHunter .

 

[NEWHunter]

Tried to report a guy just after thanksgiving for over baiting. Texted the warden the photo of the pile and told her I’d take her to the spot. All she had to do was knock on about four doors to figure out who was walking out their back door to “hunt.” She also could have verified if they were purchasing hunting licenses (my gut tells me they may not have been) and I also noted the stand he was using was on my parent’s private property. She didn’t care to investigate and said I should call the sheriff about the trespassing. The warden got testy when I told her the excess bait was her issue. She said she had discretion and likely wouldn’t cite him anyways. This guy was willfully committing multiple infractions and she didn’t care. I was extremely disappointed and frustrated by her response. Just hope I get that kind of leniency if I ever make a mistake.

Ended up calling the sheriff and he found the guy. Given my parents live several hundred yards from the guy and drive past his house multiple times a day I told the sheriff we’d be comfortable with a stern warning.

The sheriff said the warden just didn’t want to do her job. He also advised that people’s stands and cameras on private property are the property of the landowner. I told him I had relocated some stands I found a few miles down the road.

 

[Pucky Freak]

Illegal to leave tree stands up on IA public land during the off-season. However, this practice is widespread. I’ve seen hundreds of illegal stands. I called one in last month that was particularly egregious (tons of screws in a live tree) and DNR said they’d pull it.

I can think of dozens other types of witnessed violations, the vast majority of which were relatively minor.

 

[hank4elk]

I used to catch my daily limit of 5 trout and if I didn't eat them that day I'd freeze them. I would stay at the cabin as long as I could.....so on numerous occations I was in violation,til I got home. LOL
Never said I was above the law.

 

[Steve Petersen]

This is silly! You did the right thing by self-reporting but go the book thrown at you? This is not how you encourage hunters to be honest. Mistakes do happen and being punished in such a way after doing the right thing does nothing but deter others to confess to wildlife crimes.

A buddy of mine shot a small cow moose on a Bull or calf only license. He f'ed up, dragged the small cow moose out of the bush and turned himself in. He was hit with a $2000 fine, lost all tags and got a hunting prohibition for two years. Do you really think this guy will report anything ever again? My FIL shot a beautiful whitetail buck on the rifle opener, turns out, the buck had been poached/shot in the brisket weeks before and was if very bad shape. He called the CO's, they showed up and seized the entire deer as "evidence" including the rack and took his buck tag. He was left with no tag and no deer for again doing the right thing. He told them straight up though, "do you really think I will report wildlife violations in the future now that I know I will lose everything?". A few weeks later a CO he knows very well dropped off the sawed off antlers at the house in some secret drug deal... Ridiculous...

Honesty IS best policy. Losing your tag(s) and losing the animal should be the most you get for self-reporting, otherwise you just encourage people to SSS.

Back on topic; I've called the CO's three times for injured animals, one had been poached (shot in the ass before hunting season), one had been most likely legally shot but injured in the leg (its front knee joint was a 360 pivot with he foreleg flailing around) and the last was either a sick/injured mule deer fawn that was blind with apparent head trauma just chilling 1 foot from a busy road. Other than that, I see a lot of poaching related offences like cut fences or trespassing, I've never reported those as the landowners normally don't want to deal with that and would rather fix the fence or let them roam around. One offence I see often is the lack of orange (or white, yellow and red which are legal here), I don't report it but instead tell the person a sarcastic comment if I get a chance.

This past fall we got on a group of about 300 elk. My son was the only with a tag as it was during the youth portion of the season. We tried for several days to get them while they were on public land. Opening morning of the regular general season the land owners and several others on ATV/ UTVs push them all back further into private and away from the public. I reported that as well. Warden said she wasn’t surprised and would look into it. Same warden I reported the bear poaching to.

Now my boys are old enough that they can legally hunt without me along. I’ve tried to teach them right from wrong and these cases show the wrong others do. It will never stop, I know that, but instilling that sense of integrity in them to do the right thing when no one is looking is most important to me.

 

[MTGomer]

Well if we are all admitting to all of our poaching incidents of our own, in 2014 I put my fish in my friends cooler and he got an over possession citation and all of our fish confiscated since he was in possession of my fish.

 

[WyoDoug]

I used to catch my daily limit of 5 trout and if I didn't eat them that day I'd freeze them. I would stay at the cabin as long as I could.....so on numerous occations I was in violation,til I got home. LOL
Never said I was above the law.

I can't say I am any better there LOL. If the warden ever checked my freezer after the fish accumulates over the year, I'd be in deep kemshi.

 

[Garshark572]

called for people keeping undersized fish