Hunting laws. Are you a 'letter' or 'spirit' guy?

[coon dawg]

I follow them

100 percent.

 

[reylamb]

As it pertains to the letter of the law regarding shooting hours. Where do we draw the line? If 5 minutes past legal is ok, how about 10? 15? 20? If we use the rule of thumb too dark to see, what about on full moon evenings. I was on a club in SC where a member took a shot a full 1.5 hours after legal shooting time. Why? Full moon and his 50mm scope gave him "plenty of light to make a safe shot." Just where do we draw the line?

Now, on hunter orange, I may stretch that one just a tad when hunting on private property. Then again, the law reads about archery only areas, and when I hunt my private property or WMAs it is archery only.....

 

[Mac]

Orange vest

Who takes it off once 30' up a tree?

I'm guilty of that one.

 

[JerryC]

I know one guy who has bleached his orange vest so much it barely has an orange tint to it. So he may be following the letter of the law but is trying to get around the intent and spirit of the law.

Another example is plugged shotguns. Assume a hunter knew that he could only have three shells in at a time for dove hunting. He cleaned his gun the night before he went out and accidentally left the plug at home. If he realized that he left the plug at home so he never loaded mroe than three shells in at a time, although he is definitely following the spirit of the law but is breaking the letter of the law and would be cited without a doubt. -JerryC

 

[Ga-Spur]

We are hunting for sport mostly today. No one is going to starve if we don't make a kill. So I tend to be a little more stringent . One reason is I don't enjoy dressing game after getting up early I am about tuckered out . I don't really like to pay to get it dressed though because there is the cost ratio thing. Another thing is "if you kill it you eat it" we grew up with ; somebody had to clean it and somebody had to cook and eat it. This went for turtles ,squirrel rabbits , song birds and all fish too. This was fine when we were younger and needed the meat ; but this conflicted with working and other outside interest as we aged and didn't need as much game because we were becoming detached from farming and were depending on jobs to provide our protein. If I went squirrel hunting tomorrow and killed the limit I would not be able to give them to anyone that would eat them. So I can't go out and squirrel hunt. That is part of my heritage.