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?
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?
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.
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!
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.
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
> 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."
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.
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...
/s
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.