...and it is considered illegal, say because it's antlers are too small to be a legal buck but you never saw them and honestly had thought it was a doe - at least until after you shot it and only then realized it was a spike buck - what would you do once you discovered your mistake? Would you just leave it in the woods to rot and walk away or would you gut it, tag it and call whatever agency in your state handles hunting regulations?
A coworker once told me, should I ever be aiming at a buck and my shot is off and it hits a doe, and I do not have a doe permit, I should just walk away. He spoke from experience based on his own case of self reporting and getting himself into bureaucratic hot water over a similar incident many years ago. He said it was a nightmare. Maybe his advice were words of wisdom!
I wonder, how many people would do what he said to do or instead would do what they thought was ethically & legally the right thing to do like self reporting.
All the best,
Glenn B
A coworker once told me, should I ever be aiming at a buck and my shot is off and it hits a doe, and I do not have a doe permit, I should just walk away. He spoke from experience based on his own case of self reporting and getting himself into bureaucratic hot water over a similar incident many years ago. He said it was a nightmare. Maybe his advice were words of wisdom!
I wonder, how many people would do what he said to do or instead would do what they thought was ethically & legally the right thing to do like self reporting.
All the best,
Glenn B
2 comments:
Many years ago, my ex father in law called me, and told me to get over to his place, because he saw some deer run into the river bottom. I got there, sat up on the top of the hill, and he walked into the low ground by the river.
He kicked up a doe, and it ran within 50 yards of me, and I pulled up and shot it, hitting it right behind the front shoulder where I aimed. It ran past me, and right into a tree. I went to gut the deer, and low and behold, it had things dangling that don't belong on a doe. I quickly checked the head, and I had shot a button buck.
I finished gutting the deer out and tossed it into the back of my trunk. Then I took it to my place and cut it up and packaged it and froze it.
You see, 35 years ago, things were much different for me. I was married with two kids, and was working at a job that didn't pay that much when I was young. So while I was not a huge poacher, on occasion, I did shoot a deer that was not quite legal, on purpose. I am neither proud nor sorry about it. At the time, it was a choice I made, and was willing to pay the price had I been caught.
I also shot a doe by accident once, when I saw a buck go into the thicket, saw it's legs and it's neck, and put the bead of my shotgun on the neck and touched it off. I walked up and saw a doe standing where I expected a buck. My dad had a doe permit that year, and so we tagged it with that. That was a shotgun slug, and the deer dropped like a stone. The button buck I shot with my dad's 30/40 Krag.
I have never condemned anyone who killed an animal for help in feeding their family. However, I have seen violators who would only take the backstraps, or sometimes even just the antlers. That to me is worse than what I have done. I realize that the result is the same, there is one less deer for a person to hunt legally.
I realize that I am justifying my misbehavior, but I am also understanding how at times people do things that they would not otherwise do, in order to help their families.
Well, my scenario is what happened to me. I shot an antlered deer on which did not see its spike antlers. It was moving in heavy brush and each time I saw it its ears was up and or it was behind cover and I thought it had no antlers. It certainly seemed certain to me that was the case. Add to that, I think I had my closeup glasses on because as I recall I had just been adjusting my scope when I caught the deer's movement out of the corner of my eye and I would have needed the to see the scope's numbers close-up. Regardless, I had to have seen its head at least 3 or 4 times and never saw antlers; I was certain it as a doe. I waited for it to cross a clearing in the undergrowth and fired, one shot one kill. Filled out my doe tag as I waited a few minutes to assure it was dead. Walked over to the deer and my jaw dropped, it had about a 6" spike on each side; I had been wrong. I reported myself to DEC once I had gutted it and dragged it out of the woods. They responded, seized the deer and wrote me a ticket as a traffic infraction. Now I have to report this to my county PD who is the authority for my pistol license. I may lose my pistol license, my handguns and all my other firearms because of a stupid mistake.
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