What are the DUMBEST hunting regs in your state?

well i dont live in the us of a but over here in Finland moose and bear hunts collide with each other and by law u need to hunt with a group. well that isnt the stupid part.

the stupid part is that if ur hunting with a semautorifle ur mag cap for moose is 3+1 i belive and 2+1 for bears. where the hell is the sence in that?

another is we arent allowed to hunt with handguns.

non lead ammo for waterfowl.

+ many many more...

Hunting in groups for bear is a good idea.

As long as you aren't the slowest runner in the group...

Wish we could use Buck shot for big game in AZ.

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Why? Them elk at 300 yards are hard enough to hit with a rifle....

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Once steel became mandatory, I, along with a lot of others, stopped buying duck stamps and spending money hunting them
I love the hunt too much to do that. I'd probably chase them with sticks if it was all that was legal.

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You must still be fairly young.........The idea of getting up at O'Dark-30 to go out in freezing, nasty weather so I can sit in/on hard cold ground and wait for another hour before I can shoot some greasy duck, appeals to me about as much as having teeth pulled without Novocaine. Now, OTOH, a nice walk in the hills for chukar or quail or a nice sunny morning watching a good dog work, is a joy to behold.........

Florida's FWCC really deserves the slapping it's received here..........guess there MIGHT be a sorrier governmental division in the State, but it'd have to be Children and Families.............

Where does one start: 5 round autoloader reg, Knee jerked and outlawed all bear hunting (we are overun), byzantine season regs..........general season is open at LEAST two weeks longer on private lands, certain WMA's have seasons so short it's hardly worth applying for a permit.........god forbid you pop the gator that just ate grandma's poodle, you'll do time but they'll send a trapper that will kill and sell the meat.

Got your property destroyed by one of those 'endangered' bears and you will get no compensation from this state and likely WILL get a ticket for leaving food or attractants outside your home..........that includes the pussycats dish, fella's..

Truly an UTTERLY worthless collection of bureaucrats posing as wildlife managers!

No cartridge rifle hunting in most Iowa counties. Irritating.

Don't blame the Florida wildlife agency folks for the no-hunt-bears deal. That was the legislature's response to whines from the animal rights and other anti-hunting folks.

Washington State doesn't have any real dumb ones, I guess.

It used to be against hunting regs to have a handgun while archery or muzzleloader hunting, but they fixed that. (Now legal to carry in accordance with applicable CCW laws, but not use handgun for hunting or dispatching wounded big game during those seasons.)

Borderline "dumb" might be that it is permissable to use a handgun for deer hunting in some of the more populated GMU's where deer are a problem, but not a carbine shooting the same cartridge. (This is probably just to make enforcement easier...I don't see that there is that much of an increased hazard from the extra 300 fps.)

Washington State used to have some kind of minimum energy requirement for handgun hunting, which I believe has now been replaced by "centerfire larger than .24 caliber with a minimum 4 inch factory barrel length". The energy requirement used to just allow .357 Magnum, IIRC. Now it would be technically legal to use a .38 Special, or a .45 ACP. I'm not sure if I would classify this as "dumb", but it's sure hard to figure out the thinking behind this.

Yeah, Chas, steel works a lot better now days, especially the fasteel stuff, but what just seems stupid to me is that in September I'll be in a field with lead 7.5s popping doves and then in November, same friggin' field, I have to shoot steel on geese and ducks. It makes no sense. However, I dare not complain to parks and wildlife or I'll be shooting steel on doves. Morons.....

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Got one better...

We have an early "Resident Goose" season that coincides with dove season. I asked a local GW prior to the season about shooting both on the same field. (Shooting the required steel for geese...) He told me that he, and most local GW, wouldn't push the issue because they understood the stupidity. But that if a Fed. GW happened out there, you had better have only steel shot, if there is a goose in your bag.

Another steel shot related stupid law... Marsh Hens, aka Clapper Rail (they are hunted in tidal salt marshes for those that don't know of them...), can be shot with lead shot. These are the same marshes (with some season overlap)where steel is required for ducks. (This ones similar to the dove field, but over water.)

Wyman

Art, you are utterly WRONG relative to your statement alleging the Legislature stopped bear hunting.

I well remember the controversy, the season was down to only Baker and Columbia Co's (both just south of the Okefenokee Swamp) and had been incrementally closed in other state areas due mostly to habitat loss........the FWC ALONE has the authority to regulate wildlife in Florida, and in fact is a Constitutional agency, and even in spite of data to the contrary opted for a complete closure............now the situation is so out of control it borders on unbelievable.....We had one female that wound up in Daytona just north of the main street area during bike week a couple years back....she was captured and re-located to the Ocala Ntl. Forest.......same bear was killed a month or so later on I-95 just North of Daytona......bear kills by MV are a major issue but FWC's response is to catch, relocate and finally to euthanize the offending animal........basically they just 'jump rope' for the loudest group of protesters and don't want waves.........latest is a complete closure of fox hunting (chase ONLY) pens in response complaints from the animal rights groups!

I stand on my statement of the worthlessness of that agency, and in particular it's policy setters!

Anyway, it is an easily verified fact that the Legislature did not close that season...........our knee jerking FWC did!

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Once steel became mandatory, I, along with a lot of others, stopped buying duck stamps and spending money hunting them
I love the hunt too much to do that. I'd probably chase them with sticks if it was all that was legal.




You must still be fairly young.........The idea of getting up at O'Dark-30 to go out in freezing, nasty weather so I can sit in/on hard cold ground and wait for another hour before I can shoot some greasy duck, appeals to me about as much as having teeth pulled without Novocaine. Now, OTOH, a nice walk in the hills for chukar or quail or a nice sunny morning watching a good dog work, is a joy to behold.........

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When I was some years younger, about 50 I guess, and I was beginning to feel the age and all the motorcycle mishaps in my knees, I was walking back from spot number 10 on the GDWMA when I came upon two old farts sitting on chairs by a big wheel cart resting. As I was a little winded at that point, I stopped to chat. These old fellows, in their 70s, were from Missouri. They told me that every year, they put in for a drawing for a blind on a WMA up there and every year they got it except this year they missed out. One of the old gent's sons was working down here, so they came down and stayed with him during the season and hunted down here where there's no drawing and the hunting is better, anyway.

Those old fellows inspired me, I must say. They were easing along (if you're old enough to remember) in their waders kinda like Tim Conway's "old man" routine he used to do on the Carol Burnett show. LOL! I mean, THESE guys were a duck hunter's duck hunters. They're probably in their late 80s now if they haven't died in the marsh somewhere and, no doubt, they're poppin' ducks! If they aren't, they're just living out life waiting for God's hand to take them watching "Whistling Wings" on the outdoor channel.

Why do people hate the steel shot rules for waterfowl so much? It only makes sense NOT to be throwing excess lead into the environment. Any responsible hunter should avoid using lead as a matter of conservation anyway.

dogrunner, all I recall about it was all the brouhaha in the Tallahassee Democrat. Could be, of course, that legislative pressure on the Commission led to their doing the actual closing. Or from the governor's office; it's the ancient, "Do you want to be re-appointed?" thing.

It was indeed foolish, of course. The population was stable in the Appalachicola National Forest area and the rest of NW Florida. IIRC, there was some sort of decline down around the Ocala area--which is where I think all the noise originated.

And now the bears are dumpster-diving around Tallahassee...

Sort of a summary of all the posts: "Dumbness" usually results from politicians setting the rules, and not the wildlife biologists.

One thing I've noticed where there are hassles for varmint hunters is that the rules are intended to work against poaching--which do little to prevent poaching but hassle the guy wanting to hunt coyotes.

Back fifty and sixty years ago, game wardens in Texas knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that anybody out at night with a spotlight and a rifle HAD to be poaching deer. No way could they believe anybody would shoot a jackrabbit or coyote but not a deer. It took the Drouth of the Fifties and bunches of ranchers shooting jackrabbits at night to bring about a change in the attitude.

Why do people hate the steel shot rules for waterfowl so much? It only makes sense NOT to be throwing excess lead into the environment. Any responsible hunter should avoid using lead as a matter of conservation anyway.

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Especially early on, I'm convinced that if lead caused any problem at all with waterfowl, it was far eclipsed by the cripple rate of steel shot. That is still true, to an extent, with BB steel and geese on high flying days. But, I'm not convinced that lead is any problem at all in causing any sort of losses, certainly NOT the 10 percent I've heard quoted. Hell, I doubt that'd be the case of you flew over a marsh tice a day and dumped a C47 full of lead shot into it. Lead loads are simply more effective and less costly and produce fewer cripple even though steel has really improved to the point that I don't know if there's a difference on ducks anymore. Originally, 25-30 years ago, steel REALLY sucked. The fast steel stuff now days is deadly to any reasonable range on ducks. You still need either very expensive hevishot or big steel in a big gauge gun for geese, though, if they're working in to 50 yards on one of those blue bird days, and that happens more often than not it seems..

Then there's the stupidity of shooting doves with lead, then geese with steel on the same field as I explained. It'll be a gad day for dove hunters when they start mandating steel for doves. I'm not sure I know may hunters that'll obey that law, frankly when ammo cost will triple. Me, I'll just curtail my dove hunting, ain't hooked on it the way I am ducks and geese and I burn a LOT more ammo shooting doves considering the higher limits and the lower hit ratios on the little buggers.

I think this is one of the stupid laws in AR.

Hunting deer over bait is prohibited Feb. 1-28.

From 1 Oct-31 Jan, it's legal though.

oneounceload wrote;
You must still be fairly young.........The idea of getting up at O'Dark-30 to go out in freezing, nasty weather so I can sit in/on hard cold ground and wait for another hour before I can shoot some greasy duck, appeals to me about as much as having teeth pulled without Novocaine.

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Yup...54+ years young. I hunt on average, one day of every week of the season. More, if the ducks can stand the pressure.

Waterfowling is my favorite form of hunting. A marsh coming alive at daybreak makes me feel 10 years old again.

I've never had a greasy duck, but then I'd choose a properly cooked duck breast fillet over a ribeye steak.

I do love to dove hunt also. I did quail hunt back before they disappeared from my area. I attribute that to the invasion of fire ants and hogs.

I would love to hunt pheasant and grouse someday, chukar...not so much, mainly because I don't find their habitat all that physically or asthetically appealing.

Dogrunner:

you should read a book call the politcally incorrect guide to hunting. There is a few chapters dedicated to Florida. Covering bears, gators, the courts, and the state legislation and the anti-groups. a bunch of free spirit pot smoking tree huggers are to blame for the rules down there. The book lines out interesting statistics on bear/human encounters as well as Gator run-ins. Some of the views are even to out there for me but all-in-all a good read.

now back to your regular thread.

I'm in California. Which one do you want? This list never ends!!

1. In a major southern part of California you have to hunt with full copper. That means $50 for a box. Even though I reload it still is double the cost in bullets and they don't shoot as well (as a whole). Been through over 400 rounds of copper to prove it.

Other great California hunting jokes.

You can't hunt does, unless you draw a special hunt which usually takes years to draw.

The only hunts during the rut are special hunts that take years to draw.

Most of the best hunting is private land.

It's 20k to hunt a bull elk on Tejon Ranch.

It takes years to draw a Big Horn Sheep, Elk, or Antelope tag.

bigalexe said:

Why do people hate the steel shot rules for waterfowl so much? It only makes sense NOT to be throwing excess lead into the environment. Any responsible hunter should avoid using lead as a matter of conservation anyway.

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Where did the lead come from?

Indiana can hunt with a pistol in a rifle cartridge but in a rifle only a pistol cartridge....

Hunting on public land in Ohio. The dnr is divided into two sections; wildlife and parks and recreation. Each section has there own set of laws. So what is legal on land controlled by wildlife is illegal on land controlled by parks and recreation. The problem is a single track of land can be divided and controlled by both. Some differences in the laws; you can hunt on sundays on land controlled by wildlife, but not on land controlled by parks and recreation, two different hunting season starting dates, and you can't use rimfire rifles on land controlled by parks and recreation. The list goes on and on. The confusion creates too many arguments between hunters and the hikers. Many of these arguments have ruined great hunting trips.

But, I'm not convinced that lead is any problem at all in causing any sort of losses, certainly NOT the 10 percent I've heard quoted. Hell, I doubt that'd be the case of you flew over a marsh tice a day and dumped a C47 full of lead shot into it.

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The #1 reason for the steel shot laws is Catahoula Lake in central Louisiana. They found lead poisoning in Canvasbacks.

Catahoula Lake has been heavily hunted for many years - always been a major wintering ground for ducks back into the market hunting days. For many years people have hunted out of fixed blinds scattered all around the lake, and collectively they have dumped quite a lot of lead shot into the water over the years. It's been studied quite a bit.

Most places where people duck hunt lead shot poses much less of a threat because it's so scattered. At Catahoula Lake, we're talking many, many people hunting in a relatively small area out of the same blind locations for generations.

5 round or 3 round magazine limits always puzzled me; seems that it excludes some good guns from hunting or causes one to have to buy special plugs or magazines. Silliness if you ask me.

no lasers, and no flashlights larger than a mini maglite

These "lead laws" are BS! How long have hunters been using lead??? Now all the sudden a couple dead animals are found with traces of lead so you are forced to buy steel or copper. Give me a frekn break. Just another way to get more money out of us.