Read Hunting Regulations Carefully to Avoid Mistakes

If you hunt long enough, chances are good you’ll screw up and break a law. I’m not referring to blatant violations made by lawless individuals, but mistakes made by honest hunters who are genuinely ignorant about the rules or are simply being careless. Often, hunters find themselves in a situation where it’s confusing to follow the regulations.

For example, say you’re waterfowl hunting and are aware of the legal hunting hours. You set out your decoys, get comfortable in the blind, and wait. You leave your cellphone in the truck because you didn’t want any distractions. Bad move. When a small flock of mallards swoop into your dekes you assume it’s legal light and shoot at the ducks.

You have no phone or wristwatch to see the actual time. Minutes later a warden slogs over to your blind and issues you a citation for shooting five minutes early.

Trespass violations are among the most common, according to wildlife law enforcement statistics. Rules vary in every state. In my home state of Wyoming, private property doesn’t have to be fenced or posted. It’s incumbent on the hunter to determine the legal hunting boundaries. Before the advent of hunting apps that pinpoint your location and reveal the names of property owners as well as hunt area names and numbers, you had to rely on paper maps. That was it. Today there’s little excuse for not being able to identify property ownership.

Back in the Day

When an outfitter spotted a good mule deer buck on a ranch, he knocked on the rancher’s door and asked for permission to hunt. The owner granted permission and drew a rough map indicating the boundaries. That was before the advent of electronic hunting apps. The outfitter entered the ranch with his client who killed the buck. A warden approached and said the outfitter and hunter were trespassing. He started writing a ticket when the landowner weighed in and apologized for making an error on the map. The warden didn’t issue the ticket, declaring this was an honest mistake.

Sometimes ignorance will cause you to miss a profound hunting opportunity. Years ago, I’d drawn a Wyoming deer tag. I was a nonresident at the time and thrilled at the prospect of hunting the unit because it held some dandy bucks. On opening morning, my 12-year-old son Dan and I sat motionless in sagebrush where we had a good view of the country around us. Suddenly a shot rang out in the distance and a trio of bucks ran over the top of a nearby hill from where we heard the shot. They trotted into the sage, milled around nervously, then settled down and began feeding 125 yards away.

Those bucks took my breath away. They were huge, carrying antlers that appeared to be 29-30 inches wide. I looked them over with my binos and couldn’t believe my bad luck. Every one of those bucks were 3x3s. In that unit, a legal Wyoming buck had to have at least 4 points on one side. Try as I might, after intense scrutiny with my binocs, I couldn’t pick out a legal deer. I handed my binocs to Dan. He looked and couldn’t find one either.

I sat there in pain, and the bucks finally drifted off and out of sight. Dan and I hiked back to the truck and ate lunch.  While we sat there a warden drove up, checked my license and asked if we’d seen any good bucks. When I told him my story he raised his eyebrows.

Honest Mistakes

“Didn’t any of those bucks have brow tines at least an inch long?” He asked.  I thought about that and told him I recalled seeing brow tines that were definitely an inch long on two bucks. “They were legal,” the warden said. “In Wyoming, any tine over one inch counts.”

What a mistake. The state I lived in at the time considered a legal four-point buck to have at least four points on one antler. Brow tines didn’t count. Had I read the Wyoming regulations carefully, I would have tagged a beautiful buck.

Bottom line, always take the time to become acquainted with hunting laws. Ignorance is never an excuse, and it could lead to a violation or a botched hunt.

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