It is okay to use your non-hunter wife's tag so you can have another.
It is okay to take a limit of dove on openning morning, then go back in the evening.
It is okay to shoot just a few minutes before or after legal hours.
It is okay to use "party limits" when bird hunting with friends.
It is okay to use lead in "Condor Country"
It is okay to "cull" shot-up quail when you are near your limit.
All game laws should be followed.
Let's look at the letter of the law/spirit of the law argument in a different light. Let's say you witnessed a man rape a girl who was found dead the next day. You testified at his trial and his Cochran team got him off scott free. Later, you see him watching your daughter sunbathe on three different occasions. You call the authorities and the man says "We can't catch him doing anything wrong and besides, you're only harassing him because he walked". In a situation like that, would you still advocate someone taking the law into their own hands? I certainly hope not.Originally Posted by Bullfrog 31581
../|. ,[____],
l---L -=O|||||O
()_) ()_)-~--)_)
Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?
This year in CA a police officer shot dead a puma, not sure of the exact local.
I guess I'm not out of the discussion yet.
This analogy doesn't work. What's wrong to do to a human isn't necessarily wrong to do to an animal. You are taking the stance that it would be wrong to kill the child molester not because of what they are actually doing but what they might do. Let's take that as a given. Well, it would also be wrong to put up treestands in neighborhoods and randomly shoot people in the chest with sharp arrows and eat their flesh. But we do it to animals all the time. That's what this forum is about. All of us here kill animals for sport and eat their flesh. All of us would agree that its wrong to kill and eat other humans. If its morally acceptable to kill animals for sport then how much more should it be morally acceptable to kill the animal that is threatening your family or your pet/property?
Maybe we have a clash of world views here. I value the life of a human infinitely more than the life of an animal. All the animals in the world aren't worth the life of a human (unless its a scuzbag like the rapist in your hypothetical). I believe its ok for us to use animals for our benefit. We all must believe that to an extent or else we are being hypocrites as hunters. I also believe we are to be a good steward of nature. I 100% support all game laws that have the purpose of promoting good stewartship of nature. Seasons, bag limits, shooting hours, ect. fall into this category. But I will not ruin the lives of otherwise good people by making them convicted criminals in the same vein as the rapist when it comes to laws that have no purpose but to elevate the rights of the animal above the rights of a human. Its unjust and an affront to everything good the judicial system is supposed to stand for.
Finally, don't presume in all of this I'm advocating taking the law into your own hands. In fact my advice to you as an attorney and a prosecutor is to follow the law so as to avoid the legal consequences of violating it. What I'm telling you to THINK about this issue from the moral point of view. Consider it. Roll it around in your mind. Then come to whatever conclusion you think best for you to live by and understand your choices will have consequences either way. Consequences that may involve you losing your child to a lion or you going to prison if you kill the lion.
I do not believe the person that kills the lion that's threatening his family and property is immoral. They might go to prison for it, and for those reasons I would say don't do it. But immoral they are not. I am as certain in this assertion as I am certain there is a God in Heaven, that the Sun is going to rise tomorrow, and that unless Jesus comes back first, death and taxes are going to find me.
Last edited by Bullfrog 31581; 03-08-2012 at 06:39 PM.
In a situation like that; the first time I see him watching my daughter and get a restraining order(that may take a few days but here in CA I can get a EPO in an hour). The second time I see him, I shoot him.
Society in any state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil. T. Paine
I am old enough to remember when this really was the land of the free. CS
Well, it would also be wrong to put up treestands in neighborhoods and randomly shoot people in the chest with sharp arrows and eat their flesh. But we do it to animals all the time. That's what this forum is about. All of us here kill animals for sport and eat their flesh. All of us would agree that its wrong to kill and eat other humans. If its morally acceptable to kill animals for sport then how much more should it be morally acceptable to kill the animal that is threatening your family or your pet/property?
Bullfrog,
The law prevents me "hunting" humans, but not deer; apples/oranges. The analogy I made was that the law does not allow you to kill either the child molester OR the cat. apples/apples.
Please don't misunderstand me; I believe you are one of the wisest members we have here, and I applaud your posts on a daily basis. But as a prosecutor, it really surprised me that you were suggesting that one should take the law into their own hands if they felt the law was inadequately protecting their family. I well understand your point that if you don't, you might lose a child before the authorities take action. My analogy was meant to put you in the same position over something that I felt SURE you wouldn't advocate doing. Rest assured, if the cat or the child molester, either one, killed your child, the state's reaction would be the same -- a death sentence would be appropriate in their eyes. It's just that they can do it, but not you or me.
The truth is, you and I seem to agree on this. I will abide by the law whether I agree with the statues and reasoning behind them, or not. Let's just pray that the life of any member of our respective families is never at stake so we don't have to take our chances up against any game laws over killing a cat (or in your case and mine a bear, gator, etc).
../|. ,[____],
l---L -=O|||||O
()_) ()_)-~--)_)
Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?
Bullfrog you speak of going to prison for protecting your self/family/friend/dog. for killing a Puma i would like to know how many people in California have been sent to prison for any length of time. I would say not to many, but i dont feel like looking it up. I do watch a lot of news and i got to tell you i have yet to hear of anybody going to prison lately for shooting a puma.
CA law is actually better than Florida law!!!!!!!!! Bullfrog is from Florida, and they do treat things much differently there.
I have shot mountain lion here in CA, but today I cannot. Because now it is against the law I would never shoot a cat I happened to see while hunting(even though I feel it is right to kill the cat, I would abide by the law). On the other hand, if I saw a lion in the yard at the cabin where my grandchildren play --- I know what would happen if my single shot .22 was within reach --- and it wouldn't matter one way or the other if someone was watching.
Society in any state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil. T. Paine
I am old enough to remember when this really was the land of the free. CS
That's a scary thought
"ab ovo usque ad mala"
[QUOTE=Common Sense;2321479]CA law is actually better than Florida law!!!!!!!!! Bullfrog is from Florida, and they do treat things much differently there.{/QUOTE]
CS is right. I cannot speak to what happens to you in California for killing a cat. All I know is that we are similarly situated with our bears here.
In Florida black bears have been totally protected for around 20 years give or take. You can only kill a bear if it is a) in your house or b) is in the process of mauling you. You cannot kill a bear if it is a) acting threatening to you or b) it is killing your pet. You must let actually attack you before you can kill it and you must let the bear kill your pet. If you have it better in Kalifornia with your cougars then hug your nearest DFG officer and be thankful your state has fallen as far as it can. I'm telling you, we have been asked to send people to prison for killing bears in self defense or in defense of pets. We wont' do it because its unjust. Then the wildlife agency throws a fit with us and we get nasty letters from animal rights groups from halfway around the country with no ties to Florida demanding justice for the bear. The citizen be damned as far as they are concerned. Make them a convicted felon! Send them to prison! Ruin their lives!
My grandfather who raised me was a wildlife officer in Florida for 40 years. By the time he retired he supervised 1/5 of the state. I know many of the high-ups in the agency from that by-gone era where most officers were sportmen and native Floridians with strong ties to the land and its resources. Most of them saw the writing on the wall about 20 years ago. Anti-hunters were infiltrating the agency and hunting was on its way out in Florida. That's starting to come to pass now.
Nonetheless, whatever the future of hunting is here, its unjust to punish someone for killing an animal that's doing damage to them. People come first. Plain and simple. If your DFG is not putting you in that position in California, then be glad and understand that you may not have it as bad off as it seems to be when I read posts here about the state of the law in California.
I think we do agree that the law should be followed. My point is that the ONLY reason one should hesistate to kill the cat is because its against the law. Its not immoral to do so. The morality of an action does matter when it comes to "justice." Its not my job to blindly hammer everyone that violates the letter of the law in a wildlife case or any case. My job is to examine each case to determine what "justice" requires. Justice is a subjective judgement. It can't help but be. A good prosecutor has a good moral compass to know that what cases need to be prosecuted and which ones don't. A bad prosector lacks this compass or has it calibrated to all sorts of wierdness. That's why we sometimes get prosecutors or judges who don't give a darn about a rape but want to hammer someone for killing a puppy dog.
Lets take bears. The law says "don't kill bears." Well, I know the point of that law is to stop sport hunting of bears and to protect them from the black market gallbladder trade. I can also see there is a good reason why we would want to protect bears from poaching. It is totally unwise however to ban all hunting. Nonetheless, that's the law, people know the law, and people know that if they go out of their way to illegal poach a bear they are going to get hammered for it. I don't have a problem for prosecuting someone for illegally hunting a bear, because even though its a bad policy decision to ban all bear hunting, the person went out of their way to break the law not because they had to but because they wanted to just for the fun of killing a bear. But take the homeowner who shoots the bear while its gutting their beloved dog. The law wasn't originally intended to stop people from protecting their pets. The agency currently interprets it that way but they are wrong. Furthermore their current interpretation leads to unjust results and would actually cause the homeowner who kills the bear to get a worse punishment than a burglar or a low-level drug dealer. That's not fair.
Something I wanted to add that I didn't have time to get into on my lunch break...
As you can probably tell this subject touches a nerve with me. Many of us more conservative prosecutors get sick of the sometimes bizarre double standard out there in which crimes against people get very little attention or punishment but crimes against animals cause someone to have the book thrown at them. I'm also aggravated as can be that our state wildlife agency is going to pot because of the takeover of anti-hunters. There are probably a hundred poachers at any given time shooting deer at night within 40 miles of my house as I type this. Yet I'd be surprised if more than 5 get caught a year. I don't think I've seen more than 1 firehunting case in the last 2 years that I've personally handled and I see many of the wildlife cases that come through just because I'm one of the few hunters in the office and I understand the regulations better than most non-hunting prosecutors. Some of the older officers still around do it the traditional way and they spend their time out in the deep woods chasing shots at night or using the mechanical deer to catch fire hunters. But these younger officers only bring us the kinds of cases I'm railing about in this thread and never bring us the kind of wildlife cases where a person actually done wrong and poached. Its easier to respond to a bear call and prosecute the person who called you there in the first place for harrassing the bear that's harrassing them than it is to chase shots in the woods at 3am. I think many of the younger officers don't know how to be woodsmen therefore they won't get outside of view of their trucks. And then wildlife cases lose their credibility as a whole with the non-hunting prosecutors because the good and the bad all lumps together in their minds.
This is very much a Florida problem but it colors how I view topics like this when I see them come up.
Was his first name Don?
It's all fun and games to 'fudge' on the game laws until you get a ticket and you spend $1730 with an attorney to fight a $299 ticket just so you can hunt the next year.
Man, I should have not hunted that day and bought $1500 worth of brand new decoys.
What'd ya do...inquiring minds want to know...
Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you. -- Gen.9:3
I was accused of hunting city limits. I was outside of city limits and actually in a different state than the state I was cited in. (Columbia river, the channel is the dividing line and if you are only licensed in one state you can only hunt the one side. Oregon/Washington) My girlfriend plead no contest because she didn't care if she got a suspension the other guy plead no contest got a 1 year suspension my other friend and I plead not guilty and went to trial. After 2 hours of prosecution my attorney moved for a motion of acquittal because the citing officer never saw us hunting. (oregon law requires citing officer to witness the violation. Crimes are different but we were cited with a 'violation'.) So that there tells you the whole thing was bogus and the only reason the other 2 members of my party plead 'no contest' was because we were 3 hours from home and they didn't want to deal with spending more than $300 just in fuel to fight the ticket. The state of Oregon up'ed the punishment when we plead not guilty and they wanted $299 fine, $40 restitution (for the ducks), 100hrs community service, and county jail assessment. My friend and I were acquitted.
After this was all said and done, I sued the state of Oregon for unlawful seizure of property (the game you kill in Oregon becomes your 'property') and I won. I won $40 but it cost me an additional $600 to win that $40. The entire ordeal cost me $1770 but I got $40 back. The judge asked me after the second trial "wouldn't of it been easier and cheaper just to pay the fine?" I replied to him "no comment" I didn't want to get thrown in jail from a liberal POS judge. After everything was done, I wrote a letter to then Governor Ted Kulongoski, Congressmen Kurt Shrader, and Senator Jeff Merkley, demanding restitution for the 'reasonable attorney' fees I had to pay of a violation I was acquitted of on the grounds that I never should have been charged. (that was another $40 to have my attorney write the letter) I didn't get any response from all three liberal tree hugging bastards. I then filed suit again with the state of Oregon and was contacted by the state of Oregon's insurance company and they were ready to go to trial. This entire episode had taken over a year and I lost interest. I probably could have won the money back but I would have ended up spending more than I would win.
Lesson's learned from this.
Stand your ground,
Liberals are worthless,
You can beat the man at his own game.
*I probably should have played the game longer but it would have cut into my duck hunting time and it was expensive. All of that being said though, it is not always about the money, IT IS ALWAYS ABOUT THE PRINCIPAL.
20 plus years as a Deputy Sheriff and now retired. Opinion only and not to judge as I have 3 grown ones making their own choices now too. We teach the next generation mostly by our actions and jsutifications. I watched my father take game legally with exhausting efforts. When he was blessed with California game he knelt down and blessed the game with a short prayer. Yep real sentimental and not too common. I learned to respect laws and morals and those that preach or enforce them. I have been guilty of infractions and bordered on a few misdemeanors but when caught or forced to look back I did not shy away.
The laws and rules are not concrete black and white rules. The spirit of the law has been and always will be the way. I trusted the system and have never been let down. I do know some that eexplained how they were wronged but it was one side of the story. I posted the misfortunes of last years elk hunt with my brothers. The best part to remember is we all agreed and did what was right when we made a mistake. The warden agreed it was a mistake and all we lost was the meat taken. It was the best carved meat he had seen too I am sure.
I disagree with the copper laws as I am yet to find any report of a condor dead due to a lead bullet ingested. Lots of lead shot but no bullets. When I hunt pig I dare a condor to swallow my .444 bullet and live to die of lead poisoning. That would be one giant Condor.
The biggest arguement in California for following the rules is all the non-hunters use each violation against us like it was murder. THe FNG laws are misdemeanors/felonies only so local cops can enforce them. Infractions committed out of their presence cannot be enforced. Notice few actually go to jail for fng laws. Fines are normally for infractions. Still the press will show the gross violations as if it was murder.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks