Man convicted for trying to help undercover game wardens recover deer with drone
outdoorlife.com
outdoorlife.com
I agree that it seems unfair to charge this guy when he was not trying to poach, he was just trying to help recover the animal, and using a flashlight on the drone to do it. That's really not the guy you should make an example of.
Counterintuitively, hunting can often be an ethically right decision to make (depending on animal). This is because we humans have displaced natural predators and these prey will tend to over populate, over consume their food sources, and then starve. Remember that hunting is limited to seasons and that these seasons are decided per species and the population of that species. There are a lot of regulations around this and it isn't simply kill anything you want.
Similarly there are even moral big game hunting, where they specifically target aggressive and harmful animals, and use the money to fund the nature preserve.
In this manner, the ethical obligation is then to do the least harm and make the most out of it. If we need to cull some populations, it should be done as humanely as possible. Applying the same ethical ideals (distinct from practice) that we apply for livestock.
Some articles if anyone wants to read more. This is a controversial topic still but I'm providing this information because there is legitimacy to this side of the argument that many may not be aware of. I'd encourage discussion, but not bashing.
Unfortunately, like most things, there's a lot of complexity and nuance to all these things. The claim is not that there is no abuse, but that there is a difference between abusing a practice and a practice being useful.
https://dnr.maryland.gov/wildlife/Pages/hunt_trap/deerhuntas...
https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/593001800/decline-in-hunters-...
https://thehill.com/changing-america/opinion/539071-misinfor...
It's only unethical if you do it on purpose and do not make an honest effort to find the animal. It can happen that you shoot an animal and cannot find it because it ran off.
Perhaps one person's behavior is more ethical with regard to the decisions they made, but their effect on the world is not different.
Thus, we should make it easier for people to use tools to find such injured animals, so their effect on the world will be more positive (or less negative) than otherwise.
And here we're talking about the law forcing unethical behavior by limiting honest efforts to find the animal.
Fair enough. On one hand, you have the harm caused by animals I found. On the other hand, you have the blanket plausible deniability granted to anyone using drones to find targets.
Perhaps there could be a rule about not discharging a firearm while a drone is in flight. I don’t see how that would be enforceable, however, inasmuch as it requires LE to witness the illegal kill, which almost never happens.
Yah, I appreciate the problems; perhaps you can't have a weapon on your person while doing certain permitted recovery things.
In this case, it's some poor SOB who got a phone call from some hunters^H^H^H^H^H^H agents who wanted help finding a hurt animal.
Oh, duh. They're surveilling themselves.
Drone needs to keep last X hours of footage on file at all times. If you're caught, the ranger manually reviews for a moment, takes a copy of the tape and your information, and thanks you for your time. If during the spot or extended review it's found you were stalking an animal with the drone, you're fined. Pay for it with a hunting-drone use fee.
Of course, in general ethical behavior also includes one’s own preparation, in this case practicing appropriately and making sure to only take a good shot. (Although, I don’t think I’m contradicting you here, actually I’m not really sure what you meant, sorry).
Although with spotlighting in particular I am pretty sure it's because the man doesnt want you shooting guns in the dark. When you light it up you ruin your own night vision and cannot see your backstop.
People say "just having a rifle makes it unfair to the deer," but I think even if you believe that, using drones seems unsporting to the deer, and unfair to other hunters who don't have access to the same resources.
If people want to hunt for animal population control or food—I get it, fine. But any idea of fairness between the animal and the hunter is blatantly absurd.
It's not a game, however. That's what you hunt.
It seems really inhumane, to be honest. However we gussy it up, any rules of sportsmanship that get in the way of a good quick clean kill are just animal cruelty with extra steps.
Lots of traditions, in retrospect, don’t look so great—dogfighting, bullfighting. Times change.
But why do people want to do that? I think the purpose is to provide enjoyment, entertainment, fun.
> and respectable behavior
This is where I want to quibble most I think. The only respectable way to kill an animal is in the manner that causes the least possible pain and suffering. If there comes a point where fun impedes the goal of reducing the suffering, then that fun is evil.
I’m probably missing something because I don’t see any distinction between sports and games other than an arbitrary social classification that calls the former more respectable. (The deer don’t see it either, though).
I don't think that's a good take. Yes, you don't want to _obstruct_ ability to take hunted animals, however this kind of tosses away one the core rules of weapon handling - shoot to kill (the others being shoot only if you are certain you want to kill the target and shoot only if you are certain you can kill). Having to search for animal is indicative that animal was wounded mortally, which is... dangerous and unsafe practice.
No hunter wants a wounded animal as it will fill the meat with fight or flight hormones such as adrenaline.
I don't know why you think its any more dangerous, no hunters save maybe bows are right up next to it.
Some hunters will track for hours upon hours only to lose the prey, and this would help alleviate that.
I think nixxing drones completely is throwing out the baby with the bath water.
If the animal is hunted, wounded than another animal will take it's place in hunting the animal. You loose your hunt, tough luck.
Drones are a cheat.
With the technologies nowadays, they have no cover. No protection, no surroundings to protect themselves; no privacy.
Here in the UK they are using drones to hunt foxes. The drone watches the fox run and then ride with the hounds to the exact point where to hunt, flushing the fox out of the ground.
With no chance of escape; drones are not fair-game.
The only act of protection are outdated rules which are criminality exploited and illegally broken or underfunded to be able to protect. Ironic how we are against drones on humans yet when it comes to animals, oh it's just fine. How long until animal hunting is done by drone?
With AI being able to track their movements, predict, monitor movement all from the air, how the hell do they have any chance of from not being hunted? You tell me, how is that fair? You can't.
I understand hunting, and to some; sure, it's not for fun. I can understand that. I'll be pissed but can turn an eye if your genuine about it. But when it becomes a disadvantage, your a shite of a person.
Don't give me an "would you rather a limping deer who is bleeding to death" -- Don't shoot it in the first place if you know you can't kill it.
Considering HN is American, enjoy slaughtering of animals from hunting to eating veal. Using drones on animal takes all protection away from the animal.
It's not like your local Canadian moose has an Anti-AI vest or a tiger with an RPG or a fox with a nuke.
To your enduring shame, I do believe you've banned coursing of hounds in its traditional form.
Pity. You had a country once. I hope you remember it in your dotage, because it isn't coming back.
> Considering HN is American
I believe you have it confused with the Internet, but, no matter.
Feel free to rail against Americans using drones to find downed prey, however little sense it may make. I assure you we won't notice, but I do hope it leaves you feeling better about things.
This isn't about using drones to help find an animal you haven't shot yet and are having trouble finding.
This is about using a drone to help locate an animal you did already shoot, but now are having trouble finding because it still managed to run off a bit, and now night is falling. It's going to die no matter what. It's not about not losing your hunt, it's also about putting the animal out of its misery.
This isn't about cheating. It's about reducing suffering.
I get that using a light makes it easier to hunt deer and other animals since they will stay still as you shine it on them, what I don't get is why this should be illegal. Can any hunters explain it?
So far one reason I've seen is that it can disturb wildlife to shine bright lights all over the place which I understand, but it's not illegal to walk around in the woods with a flashlight in other circumstances so this seems odd.
The other reason I've seen is that it's too easy or "unsporting" to hunt deer in this way. I don't really understand this since you already need a permit/tag/whatever to hunt in the first place, so it's not like you'll get too many deer. If someone wants to hunt this way, why not let them?
But doesn’t a hunter with a gun already give you an unfair advantage over a deer?
Hunters would prefer to hunt by daylight, for the most part. If light-hunting at night were allowed, that would be the only way to take the best game, because as the comment you're responding to notes, it's much easier.
So everyone would be forced to do the thing they don't want to do, if they want to take a deer at all. That's a bad equilibrium, what we call "not sporting".
As a non hunter, I was thinking of hunter vs deer not hunter vs hunter. That makes perfect sense.
It would make sense to me if there was a "hunting league" like the NFL or something which had rules on what you're allowed to use, but why should this be a law?
It feels like making RVs illegal because they make camping too easy. If you want the challenge, just don't use them?
And if you wanted to know the REAL reason these laws exist, it's the same reason that gyms over-sell memberships. In many places, including where I live, the state wants your money, but don't want EVERYONE with a license to get an animal, because that wouldn't be sustainable. There are places where more tags are given out, and special hunts are provided to do actual population control, but I'd wager that a lot of states don't have that level of problem, and simply want the cash.
So there ya go. It keeps the "sport" of hunting alive, and generates more revenue for states because they can sell a ton of tags that don't get filled.
If I was successful every time, I'm not sure I'd enjoy the game as much. And if you've ever hunted, you'd know that you can do everything right and still walk away with nothing to show from your time. That's how it goes, anything less and you end up with killing and not hunting. I appreciate the meat in my freezer, if/when it comes, but being able to guarantee it isn't what I signed up for.
Plus, that "over-selling" is money into outdoor conservation, as long as it's not mismanaged to hell I don't care that they get a little extra. If you start moving that money into other bullshit then sure, we have an issue. But most of us like the outdoors and want to keep it around.
Deer are pretty smart, but they are crepuscular which means they feed at dawn and at dusk, when it’s harder for predators to see them. Using lights gives a hunter a huge advantage.
To hunt a defenseless deer with a firearm is unsporting in any way. Anyone wanting real, not pretend, sport of hunting can go to Ukraine. One can use any weapons, cameras, lights and drones there, and it still will be noble and "sporting".
This is not how hunting tag systems work or are designed. Not all tags are filled or should be filled. These systems have to balance many many different competing requirements and interests.
1) You might want to write the rules so the maximum number of people are able to participate in hunting and have an opportunity to connect with nature and their place in the circle of life.
2) You might want to write the rules to make sure you have maximum control over the population of a specific animal. (Ether to protect a native species or control an invasive species)
3) You might want to write the rules to protect commercial interests such as agriculture and livestock production
4) You might want to write the rules to protect human life (we don't think of it as hunting per say be we have declared our intention to wipe aedes aegypti off the face of the earth)
5) Maybe you want to maximize the safety of the hunters and the surrounding communities
6) Maybe you want to write the rules so you don't make people you are not fans of hunting don't have to witness the act. (restricting hunting in some parks or areas of parks/forests)
7) Maybe you just don't like hunting and you want to ban it all together
When you buy a hunting tag you are not buying a permit to KILL an animal you are buying a permit to HUNT the animal within the rules we as a society have decided to use to balance many competing interests. So for invasive animals or animals with overpopulation issues we might have open year round hunting with very little restrictions on weapon type or hunting techniques and you might not even have to buy a permit/tag (think wild boar in texas/clown fish in florida/asian carp in mississippi). For other animals such as elk, moose, mule deer the amount of people who would like to hunt each season out strips the number of animals that can be taken sustainability. So we add restrictions like season dates to make sure the maximum number of young can make it to adulthood. Restrictions on weapons such as a 4 month archery season and only a 1 week rifle season (You might be able to shoot a rifle 300 yards where as a bow you have to be within around 25-40 yards) allowing far more hunters an opportunity to hunt each animal before it is harvested.
What I'm most curious about is, why did the Pennsylvania Game Commission set up this sting operation in the first place?
And why did they choose to target this man in particular?
Is people recovering deer with drone flashlights some huge problem that they're trying to publicly crack down on? Because it doesn't sound like it from the article -- it sounds like this is an ambiguous section of the law where what he was doing was helpful rather than harmful.
Or did the commission have other problems with the guy but they couldn't do anything about it, so they targeted him specifically, and this sting operation was the best they could come up with?
None of it seems to add up, from what's in the article.
As a sheriff friend of mine would put it, busting a guy like that really isn’t in the “spirit of the law.” Maybe there was some bad blood or something between this guy and the wardens.
Don’t get me wrong - wardens can be pretty strict and I’ve known a few who have actually ticketed themselves for making a mistake, but this wasn’t a warden just coming up on a scene and issuing a citation, and saying “sorry boys, I wish I didn’t have to write you up but here we are…” this was a calculated setup and seems like a pretty cheap shot.
The reason why they cited him was clear in the article. People didn’t like the law, they’re trying to change it.
It seems lazy to hunt an animal knowing you’ll need electronic assistance to take control of the dead animal.
Nobody wants an injured animal to run off and die an awful death and so it’s best to find them any way you can.
Don’t shoot if you aren’t sure you’ll kill the animal. Get better at shooting if you miss so much that you need a drone.
What's absurd is running a sting to catch a guy who is explicitly not poaching and thus is not the target of the legislation. The government should be in the business of preventing harm, not going out of their way to punish people for violating bureaucracy.
Nobody can guarantee they will kill an animal with any given shot from a rifle or bow. Nobody. That you think this is a remotely reasonable position makes me wonder if you've ever hunted, or fired a weapon at a (potentially) moving target before.
“Wingenroth, who openly advertised his business in area publications, was told by state game wardens last year that such an activity was illegal, authorities said. Wingeroth, though, told them his lawyer “has a different interpretation” of the law.”
…The game wardens warned him and he basically forced their hand by telling them to shove it.
I did make the local paper, so it was kind funny when all my friends started calling me about why I was listed in the police blotter section of the local gazette.
Good times.
Because he explicitly specialized in this kind of thing. From his linked website:
> we specialize in providing services related to deer hunting,
> 3) Can you fly at night? Yes, we can fly day or night. Our drones are equipped with military-grade night vision cameras.
but this is combined with the fact that the drone was clearly actually equipped with light sources (not just night vision), which are quite broadly illegal when animals are involved.
The game wardens wouldn't set up a sting for something he wasn't in the habit of doing.
The most chapter of law for people to interpret (several sections are potentially relevant):
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/LI/consCheck.cfm?...
From the article it seemed like he was just a random drone enthusiast.
If he's actually advertising services for hire that turn out to break the law in practice, that at least makes much more sense of why they'd target him specifically.
Whether the law itself makes sense or not is a separate discussion, but now the sting operation doesn't seem like a totally random thing. Thanks!
I know nothing about hunting, or the laws surrounding it, but why would it be illegal to recover a dead animal at night using a spotlight?
Also seems like it would be tough to do the former without accidentally doing the latter.
Like put away your gun? I have walked in forests with a flashlight without killing anything many many times. The trick is to not bring a gun to the experience.
He says that during the trial, neither game warden could recall ever citing a hunter for trying to recover downed game at night — nor could they point to a single section of the state’s game code that supported their position. That code was amended in 2018 to allow the use of tracking dogs when recovering deer and other big game.
Note that the above is at odds with telling if someone is illegally hunting at night. Which is why it is often prohibited.
Isn’t a knife also well suited to this purpose? Assuming the animal is on the ground and not able to move well. Though I guess it depends how injured they are
/s
The situation is much less clear in the case of a hunter that does not have a firearm at hand like this case.
For the American Alligator night hunting is the norm with lights being legal (to spot for eye reflection.)
https://www.dnr.sc.gov/wildlife/alligator/pdf/alligatorhunti...
Because it would be used as a loophole to hunt at night with a spotlight. In the old south park episodes they used to do a bit where you could hunt anything you wanted as long as before you shot it you said "It's coming straight for us!" so you had a self-defense excuse. Loopholes will be used.
It was outside of bear season. We always suspected that he shot it first, then dragged it in front of his truck to hit it. We'll never know.
I dive for lobsters. You need to measure them before you put them in your bag. You can't put them in your bag and measure them later and release the small ones. The reason is if you could bag first and measure later, people would use this as a loophole when confronted by wardens with undersized lobsters. Similar regulations with fish and open alcohol containers while driving.
I say I dive for lobsters... I do dive, but I have yet to actually catch one! I caught one out of season just to practice, but put it back.
In Texas it is legal to spotlight wild hogs (on your own property). Even without a hunting license!
The reasons that you don't want people to use spotlights for killing the animal are not too hard to come up with. (Actually kids on college campuses do this for zombies-vs-humans, smart zombies will blind humans at night with spotlights to make it hard for them to fire their nerf guns back at the zombies.)
It is considered unsporting/unethical for a couple reasons: first because the animals like to feed nocturnally so it's easier to find them near people's fields, so there's no “tracking it through the forest” step; second the animals will often freeze and stare into the light, making them easier to target; third you can't see behind the animal to ensure that the shot is safe if you miss; for all you know you might be aimed at a neighbor's house in the distance after they've turned out their lights; fourth, getting a spotlight in your windows is a mild nuisance while folks are wandering around near your property; fifth because nighttime hunting is in general discouraged or illegal because that's when the poachers would be out and when you can't see other humans very well.
No, too many of them break the rules the moment it is hard to prove it.
But yes, I get your point.
Result? Food for months and months for the family, and the insurance company produced a replacement car. And yes, people would do this when their car was in poor shape, eg transmission going or some such. Car rusting out, etc.
They eventually changed the laws so that deer were no longer given to people in car accidents, for obvious reasons. I imagine the light law mentioned here, is due to this too.
Nice dinner for the elders.
But still, yikes. There are just so many bad things about that.
There's a third reason - scouting. PA allows night time spotlighting during specific hours and times of year for deer. You can't shine it on farm animals, houses etc. You also have spotlights for other species. So many of those points don't really apply (3, 4, and 5 specifically).
Also the mechanic behind all the strobing lights during police traffic stops. You can't see through them enough to know where to shoot at the officer.
I'm sure the many other things humans do stress out animals even more though, so I'm not offering an opinion on this case, just what I think the justification (if any) might be.
Get off to take a picture and it bolts.
Well, that's idiotic. I understand that it's probably easier to ban lights all of the time since it would be difficult to prove either way that they weren't used to actively hunt. But, at least for deer hunting, a hunter needs to be at their spot well before it gets light out. So you're going to make them walk through the forest at night with no source of light? Likewise, you're walking back at night.
If you live in PA you'll know that the game commission and game laws are pretty messed up in many cases, specifically anything that has to do with technology. A lot of the technology has been essentially "reviewed" by the PGC to see if it's lawful or not, even when I clearly isn't. They have trouble getting timely legislative updates. PA was probably one of the last states to allow laser range finders because they "project a beam", even though the beam was not visible and that technology would provide a better chance of making an ethical shot.
> It is not immediately clear if this applies to dead or wounded game, since Title 34 does not explicitly address the use of lights or flashlights for recovering game
How is that not immediately clear (at least for wounded game)? I think it's also pretty damn clear for freshly killed game.
"locate for any purpose any game" doesn't seem to leave a lot of leeway for "yeah, but what about using a spotlight to locate this specific type of game for this specific purpose; surely that's OK, right?!" "No."
Coleman also told the Philadelphia Inquirer last month that he thinks using drones to recover deer is “common sense” and that the state shouldn’t overthink regulations around the technology.
1) This will be used to let deer with small racks die
This won't be used to collect wounded game--it will increase it. It will be used to verify the size of the rack. If the rack is too small, the deer will be left to die and a different one will be shot.
2) Quit being such a lousy shot.
Get closer. Learn to use your gun better. Hit the deer in the correct spot so that you don't contaminate the meat, dumbass. Idiots won't chase down shitty shots anyway.
And just so you know, I don't really care one iota about deer or deer poachers. I regard white tailed deer as four foot tall disease carrying vermin who should be exterminated to the last.
However, if you're going to kill an animal, it's your duty to kill it and not let it suffer.
3) Drones are a nuisance
Drones are loud as fuck and are going to scare the hell out of wildlife. Some of us like the woods because it's relatively quiet. The noise of a drone can carry a very long way in a place like PA.
However, some percentage are not. And they will be responsible for the majority of the problem.
There is a reason why you can find cows in PA with "COW" painted in orange crylon (wish I were joking, but, sadly, I am not).
It's the classic ruining the fun for the law abiding people.
I also don't see that much difference between your hypothetical hunter who sees a dying deer via a drone and decides to leave it, vs. seeing a dead deer in person and deciding to leave it. The woods are big (well, not so big in PA, but still pretty big) and realistically he'd be a colossal shithead but it'd be hard to catch him. "That deer? Nah, officer, I did shoot at a big 6-pointer, but I haven't been able to find it. That deer must be somebody else's, it is opening day after all"
edit: I've only hunted in the western states, so practices may differ in the land of treestand-sitting.
I don't think very many people would disagree with you on this point. However, I believe the point is that there are, in fact, many bad hunters, regardless of where they may be sitting.
I'm reminded of this instance where a hunter shot a horse, upon which a 12 year old girl sat, mistaking it for a deer. Searching google for "hunter shoots horse" reveals approx 25 million results, for what it's worth.
https://www.brainerddispatch.com/sports/89-year-old-hunter-g...
About the hunters: unfortunately there's a lot trash hunters out there now that don't follow norms and what formerly was considered socially aberrant behavior is considered cool, even righteous.
Noisy drones in the forest/desert/canyons wherever truly suck for everyone not the drone operator. Who knew the choppers that flourished in the skies above the Grand Canyon would proliferate to fill every former natural refuge from the clamoring industrial noises of modern life.
How difficult would it be to hunt them?
I want to slowly convert my lawn to produce vegetables and fruit, but what's the point? The deer will eat the whole plant unless its very toxic to them.
They have no fear of man, like wild deer would. On account of their unnaturally high density [1] they carry nasty diseases for us, other animals and themselves.
Heck, Ive seen dead deer on the part of the interstate that cuts through the city.
[1] suburban deer have no predators (except cars), unnaturally vast lawns to graze on and idiots feeding them (why??)
Sometimes during dead-deer season I wish it was possible to hold my breath on my entire commute because it's just smelly rotting flesh after smelly rotting flesh.
They were reintroduced here in the early 1900s. Turns out, reindeer are ALSO an invasive reintroduced scourge too.
Deer meat tastes good... At least that's their saving grace.
I say we eat them out of the area. They have no current predators, and humans likely won't want bears and wildcats (mountain lions out)to be reintroduced.
We need to be encouraging people to help knock down the deer population not trapping people who are using tools to recover bodies, that will otherwise rot, into crimes/fines on weird technicalities.
> Another section prohibits hunters from using artificial lights of any kind while carrying a firearm or other weapon
I absolutely understand why we don't want people using lights to attract animals while hunting. But failing to carry a headlamp or other light source when you might be out in the woods after dark would easily lead to more people needing assistance.
https://www.sepco-solarlighting.com/blog/why-wildlife-friend...
* The agency's position is that recovery is part of the activity of hunting.
* The state law prohibits the use of spotlights for hunting during either of the hunting seasons.
* The drone operator was cited when he used a light on the drone to highlight a live deer.
* There's no indication as to what type of light was on the drone.
* The article doesn't provide the definition of a spotlight is under the law.
* The article states that the law allows recovery of game at night.
* There's currently legislation to legalize and define legal use of drones for hunting.
* Law enforcement is being accused of inconsistent enforcement of the law.
I guess my question is, how do you recovery a deer at night without a light? Is there a definition of spotlight and differentiates it from any other light that might be used to recover a light?
I'm not fully disagreeing, but there's a distinction to be made. I can find my blind, my car, and maybe a carcass on a pristine forest floor on some pretty dark nights, but if that thing jumped into some greenbrier or other brush, good luck. It's hard enough seeing them in that stuff during the day, I've had multiple occasions where I walked by a thicket in the day only to see deer flush out after I'm past it.
Also, some people just can't see in the dark well, regardless of how well they see in the day.
I think that if you are hanging around forrest with a gun and shooting that gun in the night, you probably should not be someone with poorer then eyesight in the night.
Saying that as someone who occasionally returned late from hike and would prefer not to be shot by hunters.
You're not hunting deer in the dark. You're getting to your blind before sunrise or you could be recovering your deer in the dark from a day time shot.
In that case, you can put away the gun and use the light.
The point is that the activity of hunting spans over an entire day and certain activities can be performed before sunrise or after sunset and none of those activities involve shooting a gun.
If they are looking for a deer they have shot few hours before, they can put away gun and walk around using the light. The lights are not allowed when they have guns with them.
This seems to be specific to PA game laws and at least at a glance, seems like it might be entrapment by the game wardens.
This is nonsense. Entrapment requires that the accused would NOT have done the crime, even with easy access to means, without the actions of the police. This man runs and advertises a business to do exactly this crime. This cannot possibly entrapment.
Entrapment is when a cop says "if you don't cook this meth, I will kill your wife" so you cook meth. Entrapment is NOT "here's all this equipment and supplies to make some meth, and I will buy it from you at 2X market rate, and I know you need the money since your wife is dying from cancer and you can't afford treatment". If you cook the meth in that scenario, you were not entrapped. The philosophy is that you should not commit a crime no matter how convenient or beneficial to you it gets. Entrapment is not a "cops set me up" get out of jail free card.
Part 107 means you can apply for waivers with the FAA for specific activities. They almost never do for routine stuff because it would be a huge extra cost for them.
My town is in a no-fly zone. Almost every house for sale still gets a drone video overfly. I highly doubt the guy doing them is applying for waivers and getting them approved. It is too trivial of a justification to get an approval.
You can actually look up the waivers on the FAA website, there are orders of magnitude too few of them to explain all the flights that appear illegal.
As far as I understand, flying at night is legal for most licensed drone pilots. Flying out of line of sight is still illegal.
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Long history here of bad judicial decisions
Should the laws on drones be updated? Possibly. But the spotlighting law exists for good reason.
And the defendant was knowingly providing an illegal service (they didn't call him randomly - he advertised this service on Instagram).
and on the front page of his website: https://www.wingyds.com
If anything this seems like a relatively straightforward application of bad law. The court has actually avoided increasing their scope with more lofty ideals like equity (often referred to as "legislating from the bench").
Just my opinion as a non American observer.
So I have been listening to a variety of podcasts and YouTube commenters (there is a lot of lawyers producing content) and then pull up the documents on the cases they discuss and read them.
I'm definitely pro-technology in general, but I think analogies from other sports such as rock climbing are useful, where nowadays the ideal is to lean towards cams, nuts, and other temporary removable gear that you bring with you instead of over-bolting areas or hammering in pitons everywhere. Or like how swimming restricts certain types of swimsuits that are deemed too efficient.
Just because a given technology is more efficient doesn't necessarily mean it will make the sport of hunting better. I think this sting was valid and until the laws change, drone operators should be held to the same standard as other pilots when it comes to hunting regulations.
- Have healthy food to eat
- Keep predators away from farms
- Control population booms of some species which would otherwise starve to death
... and so on.
Sports have rules to make them fair. Jobs and hobbies are about making them efficient, fun, and ethical.
There is context in this thread which suggests why this specific sting made sense, but if you're not in a competition setting, if there is a way to make hunting more humane and efficient, we should take it every time. Sport regulations make sense for teams, not as laws everyone follows. If I'm playing soccer in a field, I can follow official rules, or I can play Calvinball. Laws, here, should be set for things like gun safety and sanitation, not to enforce some sort of sporting regulations.
Lots of people in hunting use phrases such as sportsmanship and the concept of fair chase has traditionally been built into the culture of hunting. I think laws such as daylight-hunting hours, hunting seasons, limits on atv use, etc. are enforcing these ethics rather than merely being about safety, and that's important for conservation and how we relate to nature as a culture. All that to say I agree with making hunting more humane, but not necessarily more efficient.
Efficient and humane line up not 100%, but more often than not. Bad things:
1) You don't have a clean kill.
Worst-case outcome is a wounded animal surviving. Better is where hunting is right now: Clean shot to the lungs, and the animal dies in minutes or tens of minutes. Best would be one shot leads to an almost instant kill.
2) You have a clean-ish kill, but lose the animal
You hit the lungs. Animal wanders off before dying, and you never find the animal. It rots away drifting down a river somewhere, polluting the river and spreading disease.
... and so on. If we can get a shaped charge in a drone to kill an animal instantly, cleanly, and comparatively painlessly, it 100% takes away from the sport, but might be 100% more ethical than a 0.22 shot to the lungs. If we track it with thermal optics on an MQ-1 Predator Drone circling overhead, again, less sporting, more ethical.
(And yes, I can come up with examples of more efficient / less ethical too; as I started, things don't line up 100% of the time
From an outsider's perspective, hunting is important to keep animals afraid of humans, and off of roads. I don't really care how it's done. There's a target amount of deer that we want, and there's the amount of people who want to hunt deer. Figure out a price per deer that keeps the population close to the target. That's the simplest solution that provides me (the outsider) the benefit I expect.
But the laws are far more complicated than that, so there must be some sort of rent-seeking, or honor culture, or some sort of historical baggage that I'm missing.
And also, the laws mean that harvest numbers will be lower. It lets the state sell MORE licenses and tags than the number of deer they want to be actually taken, so they make more money. It's the same reason gyms want your membership, but don't want you working out :)
States are different though, some places have real population problems and will give ya a fistful of tags for cheap. My state isn't that way, they want the revenue and our game population would never support 100% success rates.
Ahh, this is the kind of answer I was hoping for. Thank you.
Recently, there are more activists joining my state's DFW, which is trying to subvert the original goal of preserving the balance between us and natural resources. Those people can go piss up a rope, because their naive understanding of the natural balance of these ecosystems is trumped by ideology. But in a perfect world, I'm happy to give the state a few hundred bucks that goes to preservation even if I don't have success during my hunts, because it's a worthwhile goal.
For over hunting you have concerns over what sex or age a deer may be, time of day (more vulnerable at night), time of year (you don't want to kill a doe while it's pregnant or taking care of a fawn), and of course total count/limit.
For safety. Night hunting can be pretty risky, some locales don't allow rifles due to how far the round can travel, some require a certain distance from homes, etc.
For sportsmanship and ethics, things get a little more weird, because you're potentially pitting morals against each other. It's it ok to spotlight and take down 10 deer at a time? Maybe if you purely hunt for food for your family and this was the one time of year you planned to do it, but that'd get taken advantage of quick broadly. Even weapons are hotly debated in the hunting community, bow and arrow seems fair due to having to be real close, but your chance of missing or worse, only wounding the animal, is significantly higher.
I could go on for a while on all the above, but from my understanding, your premise is generally the original intent of conservation laws. They were to create a baseline of how many deer are taken a year. What happens though is people find loopholes they exploit, leading to overly broad, complex, and sometimes conflicting laws created to counter the problem.
What's wild about this case is Pennsylvania seems to want to make it hard to recover a potentially suffering animal, where many states have laws to protect you in recovery of the deer so it doesn't die suffering or needlessly go to waste. Many states make the distinction between recovery and hunting and have laws that apply to each separately. Pennsylvania in this case seems draconian and counter intuitive, which is frankly unsurprising from what little I knew about their hunting laws before.
The first rule is you don't chase it. Just sit still for an hour or two. The deer will bed down in nearby trees and bleed out.
Dirty sleazebag. It is good to know what kind of moral character government cultivates. Not that I would expect anything honorable coming from that direction.
If you don't want to go to jail or be fined, don't commit the crime, no matter how convenient or easy it seems to be.
> If you don't want to go to jail or be fined, don't commit the crime, no matter how convenient or easy it seems to be.
This in particular
> If the only thing stopping you from doing a crime is easy access, and a cop provides you that access, and you commit the crime, you were in the wrong.
If you don't see how this is different from the example above, then I can see you are bringing up irrelevant points.
Same reason many areas (eg Alaska) allow you to fly into a hunting area, but not hunt the day you land. Otherwise you could use the plane for locating and/or driving animals fairly precisely
This has got to be the dumbest case for entrapment that I've ever seen.
The taxpayers should have recourse against agencies that do things like this, particularly given the PA Game Commission's history of dimwitted fuckery.
Isn't recovering something good?
They were allowed to shoot and kill the deer. They were not allowed to find the corpse of the legally killed deer using a drone.
Deer run after you shoot them. On many states people use bloodhounds to recover the harvest.
never help anyone ever because they may be a fed
edit: I guess I can't now so I'll just edit it
N.B. In no way do I think the conduct here is doing crime, but for the purposes of entrapment take the illegality as given. His site[1] clearly markets his business as doing deer recovery, so the conduct falls into a pattern. It's not like the warden called up his friend with a drone, asked him to look for a deer, and then was like 'Ha I caught you doing crime give me $1500'
Is everyone up in arms here only because HN likes drones and feels like this is an encroachment on drone operators?
Whether or not it's technically entrapment, or bears similarities to undercover drug cops.
This is another example of state trying to outlaw something by chipping away at it. Making normal things illegal. Drones are legal. Looking for your kill is legal. Looking for your kill with a drone is a crime!
It would've been entrapment if they'd openly said they were game wardens who needed assistance - the defense would be that they wouldn't normally help someone outside the context of a law enforcement request - but because this person would've helped a non-warden hunter in the same way, it's not entrapment.
Same deal as drug/prostitution sting operations.
This is not one of those cases. This is open-and-shut buying-drugs-from-the-known-drug-dealer not-entrapment.
Whether what he was doing should be illegal is a more interesting question. Entrapment it is not.
Note that drinking and driving does not mean 'drunk driving'. But the state is expecting that soon-to-be-buzzed and drunk patrons drive home.
(that said clearly the conduct itself shouldn't actually be illegal, viz. the laws being passed to make it explicitly legal)
The man was set up by two game wardens who called him for help locating a deer (edit: to clarify, to "recover" a previously-shot and injured/killed deer's body) with his drone, and subsequently charged with using electronic devices while hunting and disturbing wildlife, among other things.
"Help, we shot a deer and want to find it in the dark so we can put it out of its misery. Will you help us?"
Which person of good conscience would say no to something like that?
Who would even think that would be illegal, much less under four different state laws...?! Why are we spending tax dollars on something like this? What sort of harm are we trying to prevent by forcing deer to die slow, agonizing deaths in the dark?
Good, humane results don't make the acts legal.
This seems more like "Help, I'm hungry. Will you turn on the kitchen light so I can find the pasta I bought?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlighting is widely illegal. He most certainly would've known this; it's clear from https://www.instagram.com/wingydroneservices/ they're at least close to the hunting world.
If you try sufficiently hard, you can always find random charges to throw at someone, and if they don't have good enough lawyers, they're fucked. That doesn't mean the laws are just or desirable to begin with. It also doesn't explain why those laws were written in the first place, i.e. what issue they were initially trying to address.
You'll find various explanations, but the most compelling to me is "because you probably can't see what's behind the lit-up deer when you shoot very well". Good way to risk hitting something/someone.
> It's also not illegal everywhere.
It was here, it seems.
Seems... dubious. If you can't see behind the deer while it's lit up, you certainly can't see what's behind it in pitch darkness. Presumably the eyeshine of other animals, or the reflective clothing / panicked shouts of another person behind the deer, would all stand out more in bright lighting.
> It was here, it seems.
Are you sure about that? There was no law per se against using drones to recover deer, so they had to cobble together 4 vaguely relevant statutes. And even the judge reprimanded the legislature for having such confusing, ambiguous laws on the books.
I believe this is still under appeal, so it may ultimately resolve in favor of the drone operator...
You can demonstrate this pretty easily at night in your backyard. Have someone shine a flashlight at something. Same reason photos of the moon don't show the stars in the sky; they get washed out by the brighter object.
> Are you sure about that?
That's a reply to "It's [spotlighting] also not illegal everywhere." Yes, I'm certain, given the charges.
> You can demonstrate this pretty easily at night in your backyard. Have someone shine a flashlight at something.
I don't hunt, but I do go outside at night with a hiking headlight, and it's never been my experience that I could see something better, further away, without lighting. Even when there's something closer to me reflecting much of the light (like a tree), some of the light will go around it and light up what it's behind it. In the absolute worst case (like when I accidentally point the light at a retroreflective street sign), yes, there'll a huge blindingly bright spot, but still much of the light will spill around it, and aiming just a few degrees left or right will then illuminate the stuff behind it.
Have you had different experiences, or can you think of a specific scenario where this wouldn't be the case?
> Same reason photos of the moon don't show the stars in the sky; they get washed out by the brighter object.
That's not really the same thing. Cameras have limited dynamic range to begin with, and in that case, both the reflected moonlight and the ambient starlight are facing the photographer... with the reflected moonlight being several orders of magnitude brighter.
That's more like having someone shining a bright flashlight in your face from a foot away while there's some old dim string lights in the background.
It's not the same as two objects reflecting light from the same light source pointed away from the observer, held by the observer. Unless there's some big difference in reflectance between those objects, presumably their apparent brightness would mostly be a function of their distance.
Yes, I've looked at lit-up objects at night and not been able to see very well behind them. If you need a light to see the deer, you need a light to see the stuff that's potentially dozens or hundreds of feet behind it too.
Humans have better dynamic range than a camera, but not unlimitedly so.
Anybody who hunts should know the laws around tracking and recovering game animals.
Do you know your state's entire vehicle code by heart when you drive?
Do you know every environmental and wildlife law when you go on a hike?
Do you know every state's tax laws when you do business online?
Our legal system is incomprehensibly complex, and the average person stands zero chance of "knowing" all of its nuances. For every subject matter of law, there are specialized lawyers who spend their lives studying and practicing just that one little sphere.
Now, maybe the context is that there is something obviously illegal and commonly understood about recovering game at night that hunters know and I don't...? Is there?
You dont need to know the entire vehicle code for driving or hiking, but you are in fact responsible for understanding the parts relevant to the actions you are personally engaging in.
But to your point, yes, a lot of this is common knowledge amongst hunters.
But vague ideas? Sure. Some sort of more "restorative justice" approach, e.g. make the person attend an educational workshop about why drones aren't allowed, then make him do a few hours of community service for his local parks/hunting grounds. Don't give him a criminal record for something like this.
I don't think law enforcement should always be a binary, adversarial system, especially when it's the state against a lone individual for some victimless crime (or where the harm is so spread out that the victim is just a vague "everyone" rather than specific named individuals).
> But to your point, yes, a lot of this is common knowledge amongst hunters.
I believe you. It is surprising, then, that this drone operator just advertises his services online.
However, I think activities that are specifically licensed are clearly different. When you get a hunter's license, driver's license, or business license, you are certifying that you understand is that a body of law exists around that activity, and you are responsible for knowing it.
Another problem is that giving essentially one free pass for low detection events effectively invalidates the law. For example, things like poaching and game violations, lawbreakers might have a lifetime detection rate of 1% . Knowing you get one warning means many people will only consider compliance after that warning.
>I believe you. It is surprising, then, that this drone operator just advertises his services online
IMO, One brazen operator is less surprising when you consider the 10s of thousands of hunters that dont do this. I can call up hundreds of unlicensed caterers online, but I expect every one of them knows their status relative to the law.
I can only speculate about this guy. If they had honest intent and actually unsure, the wardens are always 1 phone call away to clarify their understanding of the law. Maybe they thought wardens had bigger fish to fry, maybe they were making a ideological statement. I think it is even possible that the thought it was legally ambiguous and willing to risk it. I just don't think it is realistic to think they were completely ignorant in this case.
If they were some recreational drone operator providing impromptu aid, and unaffiliated with a hunting business, that would be a different case (and I hope that wardens and judges would take this into consideration).
That seems fundamentally different to me than using a drone to recover a deer's body (that had previously been shot).
Does that matter?
Maybe it's the case that it's impossible to enforce a working difference between "using a drone light to mesmerize a deer pre-kill" vs "using a drone light to locate a deer's body", but in that case it seems like the law should just be against drones in hunting seasons/areas, rather than "spotlighting". But as far as I can tell no such law was on the books (and the judge also wanted clearer laws).
And spotlighting is illegal for good reason. Deer hunting (and most game hunting) is supposed to be "sporting" - there should be some challenge - tracking, hit the target, etc. Spotlighting takes away that sporting aspect - it causes the deer to freeze, making it easy to kill.
And if "spotlights for recovery" is legal, then "spotlights for hunting" becomes nearly impossible to enforce as a hunter would always claim "the deer was dead, I was just recovering it".
The problem comes when the game dept also makes it clear it wants hunters to recovery injured/dead game. Which is hard at night without a spotlight.
The answer, to me, seems to be "don't hunt deer at night." Making spotlights legal for recovery just make it impossible to enforce anti-spotlighting laws with live game.
I'm not sure if 1) there is a difference (or should be) between hunting and recovery or 2) if it matters if it's night or 3) if it matters if it's electronically aided or not or 4) if it matters whether it's a spotlight used for mesmerization or a drone with minimal lights (or maybe IR)...
Even the judge in this case seemed to believe the laws were confusing and ambiguous and wanted the legislature to clean them up. In that case, I wish they'd just let the man go (and stop enforcing these laws until they're cleaned up and rewritten).
---------
Maybe there is some unspoken implication here that Mr. Wingenroth clearly knew this was an illegal act, offered his services deceptively somehow (i.e. maybe drone recovery is legal but drone hunting isn't?), but then why would he advertise such services online, and then why would they nail him for recovery instead of hunting?
It just doesn't really make sense. What am I missing?
I don't know whether it is or not, or why, but harassing wildlife and livestock is certainly illegal and as someone who's had a drone flying over his herd of horses, I can assure you that it's for good reason.
> difference (or should be) between hunting and recovery or 2) if it matters if it's night
Are you seriously asking why hunting at night might be illegal? If it helps, I can tell you about my sister-in-law whose horse was shot and killed at dusk. "I thought it was a big deer."
This is an important part to me. Just because something is illegal does not make it correct. A big reason we have a court of peers in the first place is to have this check. We have jury nullification which is the equivalent to "that law is dumb" or "law is fine, but applying it here is dumb"
Not to mention that times change. All rules are made to be broken. I think of all people, programmers would be experts in understanding how any set of rules cannot have complete coverage over all situations. If you don't understand this, go visit your QA team and ask them why this random HN user told you to visit them, and bring donuts or something.
You arent, hunters are.
For the most part, hunting law enforcement, ecological work, and wildlife science are funded directly from hunting permits.
Whether this is a good law or not is open to debate. There is a vast amount of hunting laws that restrict actions that are not sporting, sustainable, or have potential for abuse.
I imagine the argument is that there is no viable way to discern hunting with drones from recovery with drones, so their use is prohibited entirely.
"Entrapment is a complete defense to a criminal charge, on the theory that 'Government agents may not originate a criminal design, implant in an innocent person's mind the disposition to commit a criminal act, and then induce commission of the crime so that the Government may prosecute.'" - Justice.gov
The only way this doesn't look like entrapment to me is if the agent called the man and said, "Hey I wounded a deer, can you help?" and the man replied, "I'll use my drone!" Even then, I seriously wonder how this doesn't stray into the territory of implanting the disposition to commit said crime.
Entrapment is when law enforcement coerces you into taking an illegal action that you otherwise would not have taken. I.E. A federal agent telling you that if you don't walk into that bank and rob it, they will arrest you for (a planted) firearms possession.
This case is about whether the defendants actions actually were illegal, because PA law seems ambiguous about it.
Need, sympathy or friendship. I think it's trivial to allow that finding a wounded animal would constitute a sympathetic plea.
It's the predisposition that gets him here. Given that he advertises the service, he's obviously predisposed to the action.
(In case it gets deleted: a photo of a dead deer, from October 20 2023, with the caption: "We were happy to help Nate locate his personal best buck. The roller coaster of emotions is hard to explain, but the end result of this story was awesome to share. Congratulations, Nate! #wingydroneservices #from400above #drone #dronedeer")
To give a simile example to show why I think this: if someone calls me up and says "I don't like a person and wish I never had to see them again, please shoot them dead" vs. them calling me saying "I don't like a person and wish I never had to see them again" and me thinking on my own and shooting them dead - either way, I'm choosing to do something illegal, and I haven't been asked to do it by anyone I have reason to believe has the authority to let me legally murder someone. My shooting the person would, rightly, be illegal and not entrapment even if the person pretending to be my friend on the phone actually was a police officer.
(obligatory I Am Not A Lawyer)
Lol, only SLIGHTLY disappointed since my initial thought was, "They make deer-shaped ones now? That's interesting, I wonder how they move...".
But still, the legal murkiness of this situation is interesting in and of itself. Thanks for sharing!
That said, they're game wardens. It's not like they could've been off solving murders or arresting domestic abusers or whatever. It might just be this is become a major problem in their area and this is a pretty good way to make sure everyone knows it's not ok.
It's quite literally their job to enforce the laws regarding hunting/game/etc.
If (per the the article) both Pennsylvania and other states are busy moving toward de-criminalization - well, gosh, it sure sounds like top-level government policy makers believe the "crime" is neither bad, nor worth using state resources to discourage. Maybe the game wardens could take a hint from their way-up-at-the-top bosses?
Or -
> “The Legislature needs to address this,” Magisterial District Court Judge Raymond Sheller said while delivering his verdict, according to the Associated Press. “Everyone is playing catchup to science.”
- which seems to loudly hint that, from the PoV of current best practices for wildlife management, the "crime" is reasonable/acceptable/responsible behavior. Game wardens are supposed to know and care a bit about that kinda stuff, aren't they?
If the government truly wants to make spotlighting with a drone legal, the correct place for intervention is at the DA level. They could have chosen not to prosecute.
And regardless of the drone, spotlighting is still illegal and for good reason. It would never make sense to allow spotlighting from a drone but not from ground - that defeats the purpose of banning spotlighting. If the state does make spotlighting legal, that's fine I guess (I disagree, but don't live in PA).
Ah - you live in one of those towns that writes tickets for driving 1 MPH over the speed limit, or jaywalking across an empty street, or having a burned out brake light, or ... correct?
As for officer discretion, I'd prefer they had less.
But even still, there's a pretty massive difference between mindlessly speeding by a small margin (which isn't even a criminal offense in the US) and doing something that explicitly illegal and impossible to do without forethought (spotlight deer).
I would say using that time on a guy who is doing something which might not be illegal in a couple months is a dickish use of that discretion. Their hands aren't tied here.
I completely disagree with you on your statement.