[bohunr]

Just got this in a newsletter e-mail from my State Rep.

Protecting Honest Hunters

A new law seeks to protect and encourage honest hunters by addressing situations in which hunters may erroneously harvest an animal and turn the animal into the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

Presently, a hunter who harvests a deer or turkey of the wrong sex or accidentally takes two can turn the animals into a wildlife conservation officer and receive a new tag, pay a small fine and suffer no license revocation. Act 3 of 2018, formerly House Bill 359, expands that protection to the other two big game animals, bear and elk.

The new law does not change any of the other penalties hunters face for illegal out-of-season kills, except for the elimination of license revocations in those instances where the hunter self-reports and surrenders the animal.

Restitution for mistakenly killing bear or elk has been set at $100 for each animal killed. Violators who are on a payment plan to repay penalties and who are making on-time payments, may not have their hunting or trapping privileges suspended for failure to pay penalties.

 

[47studebaker]

I saw this a while ago and thought "who kills an elk in mistake for a deer" and how big was that turkey that turned out to be a bear ?

 

[bigbear]

If this passes, hopefully the penalty is an appointment with the nearest optometrist and a prescription for new glasses.

 

[Woods walker]

It just goes to show how little the legislators know about hunting. However, lack of knowledge doesn't stop them from pandering for votes with this kind of crap. There is a game law that says if you owe penalty for more than 180 days, you lose your license until the fine is paid, however long it takes. When that law was passed, you wouldn't believe how much penalty money started to come in when June rolled around each year and licenses went on sale. So if you turn in an animal and are assessed a restitution and you go on time payments, you can draw out paying the restitution for years with no ramifications. This is really stupid, not to mention mistaking a cow elk for a bull or a deer or a bear for something else? These are the kid of people who shouldn't be hunting to begin with.

 

[GROUSEWIT]

Guy staying in our campground in CO this yr was from York, Pa and shot a real nice Mule deer buck for a bull elk!

 

[Dennis Hill]

sounds like he needs an eye doctor or someone to sit down with him and review pictures of all big game animals

 

[bohunr]

a buddy of mine grew up in ST. Marys, PA he claimed that one year someone shot a white goat and actually tagged it and tied it to the hood of his car to show it off. he thought he shot an albino spike whitetail.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

I can remember at least two cases in the late 1960's in which hunters fired at a deer and had the bullet pass through and also kill another deer behind it. One happened on the SGL at Mt. Gretna. Another instance is where the boundaries of a management area go through a wooded area. The hunter may be legal on one side of the boundary and illegal just 100 yds away. Or another situation, is the hunter sitting for squirrels on a cloudy evening and shoots a squirrel sitting on a stump, that turns out to be a flying squirrel instead of a gray. or worse yet, shoots a young Delmarva Fox squirrel. (hunting past sunset, was a really dumb idea in my mind on cloudy evenings it gets too dark before sunset.)

 

[DennyF]

30 years ago, a friend of mine used to hunt trophy bucks and turkeys at White Oak Plantation in Alabama. One year he took another guy along, that had bugged him for years to go down there.

That feller wasn't a particularly bright lad and not much of a deer hunter. Don't think he'd ever killed a buck in PA, by that time and had hunted here for 20 years? Year or two after the Alabama trip, he paid to shoot a buck with a rifle at a fenced operation, then tried to pass it off as a PA archery kill.

When a DWCO I know investigated, the poor schmuck had to produce the invoice from the pay to hunt place and was cited for falsely using his PA archery tag. DWCO said that touched off "a fierce domestic dispute" as he was leaving, when the guy's wife found out what it had cost to kill that buck.

:surprise2:

Anyhow, about the third or fourth day at White Oak, the doofus decided to take his doe, which was available for a fee, since he hadn't managed to get a buck yet. So he shoots at a doe running past his stand at maybe 30 yards (multiple other doe in the same bunch), kills two doe with one shot.

Manager of the place assessed him a penalty for killing the second doe, based on the fact the guy was shooting a 7mm Rem Mag and "as an experienced hunter" - should've known the round was more than capable of passing thru one deer and killing the other one at that short distance. He was also informed he was no longer welcome to come there to hunt again.

People can do some might strange things, when it comes to hunting seasons.