Is this legal ?
Whitetail Deer
I always thought night vision aiming devices weren't allowed to be used for big game hunting. How is this possible then ? Can someone please help me out who is better versed in the laws about this than me. Apologies for not being about bowhunting.
That video isn't hunting, it is depredation. Depredation is different than hunting. Hunting big game is (hopefully) respecting the animal enough to hunt under fair chase conditions. Depredation is treating the animals like vermin and destroying them in any way possible.
The safety issue aside, what's the difference between shooting a deer with the aid of an electrical device at night and monitoring their every move with a camera you can post in the woods and check from a phone? Or electrically powered sights and other aiming/range finding devices or electrically powered feeders with timers?
We are heading towards the time when you will be able to buy a certain amount of tags. When and how you fill them is your business. If you want to shoot all your deer in one night over a baited field with spotlights then do it. It's not my way but if you are out of the woods for the season after one night then that's less people in the woods for me!
laws vary on cull/reduction/depredation work. In Virginia it's illegal to bait or use a light even for depredation work. Hired wildlife "snipers" can though. Weird, huh?
Elkstabber, I thought depredation was for hogs, coyotes, which are not big game animals and considered pests. Didn't know deer would be in that category since its a game animal.
Yep they've done the same in the liberal communities of Iowa. We have two neighboring cities, Iowa City (ultra liberal) and Coralville (not so much). Coralville set up a bowhunting solution to their urban deer problem where hunters PAID for tags to hunt the urban deer. Iowa City spent the taxpayers money and hired sharpshooters to slaughter the deer at night over bait because, God forbid anyone should get one ounce of pleasure hunting for those deer.
Almost any animal can fall under a depredation label if they have reached a population that is destroying habitat. Culling operations have been around in many areas for a long time. In addition, landowners can get crop depredation permits to kill animals. The laws varying how they can go about it vary. The two culling operations I was on, we used sub-sonic rounds and shot most of the deer off feeders at night. Just FYI- I pretty much agree with Woods Walker on several points. hunting as many of us "elder" sportsmen know, is quickly vanishing. It is becoming a sport for the rich, the privileged and landed-much like Europe.
Bentshaft: "depredation" means different things to different people. I was mostly differentiating between hunting and depredation killing because that was the OP's question.
Hogs and coyotes are typically viewed as nongame by most state game departments. And of course big game like deer, elk, and buffalo are game species but in some cases even they are killed under depredation rules. In many states (especially VA and other southern states) farmers kill a lot of deer with depredation permits. Where I live in VA there are farmers that simply regard deer as vermin and nothing more. There are depredation hunts for elk in the Ruby Mtns (NV) and Kaibab Plateau (AZ), and for buffalo in Yellowstone, for three examples. In the elk example they are hunted to keep them from populating key mule deer habitat. In the buffalo example it is to trim the herd size in the park.
Thanks guys, all clear now
"and monitoring their every move with a camera you can post in the woods and check from a phone? Or electrically powered sights and other aiming/range finding devices "
For real?
I was totally unaware of these culling methods, naïve I guess. Kinda angers me when SOME landowners don't allow hunting, then use culling methods to thin the herd. Are these culling operations then made responsible to harvest the meat, or are they just throwing it away, and are they being regulated and supervised to ensure the meat does not go to waste?
Woods Walker, you and I generally share the same views, but I gotta tell you the difference in cameras, feeders, and rangefinders as opposed to actually shooting a deer with NV makes a lot of difference to the deer.
Here in Oregon running mountain lions and black bears has been outlawed by the voters since the mid 90’s. But now we have a cat population that is out of control so our tax dollars are being spent to pay houndsman on the government payroll to cull so many cougars in WMUs that have the highest population. Why not put a draw system in place and allow us to hunt with hounds in a limited tag release? I guess for the life of me I can not figure out why what was voted to be illegal is Legal for our government to do when they decide so? I think culling out cats with some hounds is needed but let’s turn a tax burden into some dollars flowing in. Sorry for the rant and hijacking the thread. I feel better now.
Oh and happy Friday all. Gonna try to thin out the cougar population tomorrow with my daughter and a foxpro.
"I was totally unaware of these culling methods, naïve I guess. Kinda angers me when SOME landowners don't allow hunting, then use culling methods to thin the herd. Are these culling operations then made responsible to harvest the meat, or are they just throwing it away, and are they being regulated and supervised to ensure the meat does not go to waste?"
You are not seeing the whole picture. In some cases, the problem is in residential areas where hunting with a firearm is out of the question and bowhunting is not even a consideration. Think about shooting a deer and then have it jump in someone's swimming pool. Plus, bowhunting will simply not kill enough animals to help. Professional control is the only answer. When you kill 25 deer in one night, out of one truck over a 3-400 yard area, there is a problem. That said: Depending on the amount of and location of some lands, in some states, landowners must allow supervised hunting on their property to get depredation permits. Crop depredation and culling are not the same thing. Culling is almost always, state supervised. Crop depredation is not and the rules governing each vary. However, in most cases, both are enacted when hunting is either not working or not feasible. I was contacted last year regarding my suggestions on a problem in the adjoining county. They were about to spend big $$ on a some cockamamey sterilization program. I and some other biologists, got that stopped. Problem was so severe, one landowner, with less than an acre, had a picture of 32 deer in his backyard. This was in a subdivision with 125-houses on less than 1-acre lots. Another example, a few years ago, the Feds came in and shot some problem geese...very quietly and with no publicity, I might add. A few months ago, in a neighboring county, they were shooting hogs out of helicopters. It has been going on, mostly very quietly in many areas for a long time. If you ever have the chance to go on a culling operation...don't go.
I participated in a depredation hunt for mule deer near Hyattville, Wyoming on the west slope of the Bighorns in 1975. I was living in Greybull then working for the old SCS and word went out that they needed riflemen for a very small area of designated hay meadows near Hyattville.
Being 23 years old and at the peak of my blood lust, I eagerly signed on, as I would get a year's supply of meat out of the deal. We were given explicit instructions by the Wyoming G&F with maps and the whole deal. The area in question was in reality very small and quite well marked. NO BUCKS were allowed to be shot.
We got there and were put in place and when it got light the deer started coming in from the "out of bounds" area into the kill zone. It didn't take long after the shooting started that I realized that I wasn't hunting, but just killing. I did what I signed on for and did my level best to make one shot kills. I completely understand the WHY part of what had to be done, but I'd never do it again, meat or no meat. Looking back on it it made me appreciate what made hunting "tough", and why it's called HUNTING and not KILLING.
Man takes control of things and the results isn't always text book. Animals often get themselves into trouble when their actions are against the intended actions of the human. Therefore, anything can be vermin given the situation. Its subjective.
"Plus, bowhunting will simply not kill enough animals to help. Professional control is the only answer."
Bowhunting urban areas and parks has worked very well in Iowa. We have several cities and parks that are successfully using bowhunting to manage the deer herds. In fact, just about every major urban area in Iowa now has a bowhunting deer management plan in place and these plans have been in place since the 90's. Last season, they killed 400 deer in the Des Moines area.
I'm aware of locations where the farm land owner paunch shoots deer on the edges of their fields with .22's and lets them wander back into the timber to die just to get rid of them. Lots of farmers consider them "corn rats" and do whatever they can to get rid of them.
