The whole issue of poaching versus hunting when you want to, is, in my view, a question of how much freedom/authority you've ceded to the state and what the impact is on the common resources. There are good reasons for hunting seasons/regulations, mostly to do with preservation of game stocks. For some game, in some areas, this makes very good sense. In others, to quote Mr. Brumble, "... the law is a ass."
There are states where the number of deer is only limited by starvation. That is, they are so plentiful, they overwhelm the vegetation needed to sustain them. I've read that nation-wide, there are 1.1 MILLION deer-vehicle collisions a year, and that there are more deer in America now than when Christopher Columbus set foot on the continent. It's easy to understand why. We've eliminated most of the predators. Wolves no longer keep deer populations in check. With sufficient food, deer populations can reportedly double every two to three years, so what top predator is going to do the job? Chronic "wasting disease" in deer has been linked to the hyper-dense deer populations that have arisen in the past 50 years. Deer dying of disease is somehow an improvement over humans culling the herd for food?
With that in mind, is the state acting to preserve a communal resource? Or enforcing antiquated tickey-tack laws as a source of bedevilment, oppression and revenue? Deer in America today are so numerous that they are beginning to have an adverse ecological effect on the forests.
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/15/137192604/what-does-more-deer-mean-for-forests
The question of "legal" versus "illegal" is quite different and separate from "moral" versus "immoral"... or even "right" versus "wrong".
Subsistence hunting of deer shouldn't even be regulated given the current deer stocks. The same can be said of some migratory birds. Habitat deprivation is a much bigger impact on most bird populations than hunting. (Perhaps THAT should be regulated better?)
In the early 1900s, it was the commercial hunting that depleted deer, ducks and geese. Ducks, for example, were hunted with machine guns and punt guns. A single shot might take out as many as 50 ducks on the water! Facing that sort of pressure, it's not surprising that many species declined.
But today, in an era where the number of hunters is declining, game stocks are breeding themselves to the point of overwhelming food supplies and diseases arise as a proximate result of gross overpopulation, many game laws are simply out-of-date and counter-productive. In short, the state hasn't kept up with the times, and the hunting season laws are not only failing in their purpose - they are leading to massive destruction - of habitat and eventually through starvation and disease, the herds they are meant to protect.
It's clear from the posts here that a lot of you are totally ignorant of the facts - so do some checking.
In law, you have the concepts of "malum in se" and "malum prohibitum", that is, a thing that is inherently wrong (like raping a 2-year-old) versus a thing that is only wrong because it's "prohibited" (like hunting on a Friday when the season doesn't open until Saturday). In general, society approves of laws regarding the former, while laws that fall into the second category must be viewed with a jaundiced eye unless you are one of the stupid yuks who doesn't value freedom and who thinks the state can do no wrong.
As for the "legal and legitimate helping hand and ... free food" - you've got your brain wired sideways. That "free food" is paid for with MY TAX MONEY. While you condemn self-help through procurement of a plentiful natural resource, you seem to applaud government-sponsored theft of my earnings.
You think hunting early is less moral than theft?
As for nutrition, you don't get much better than venison. Its lower fat content is actually better for you than that fatty hamburger you eat from that hormone-saturated cow.
As for what's criminal - I think the government confiscating my income by threat of force to hand it off to someone else in the form of "free food" is far more pernicious than a person providing for themselves by hunting an overstocked game resource. But that approach doesn't satisfy the government's need to make us reliant on the government - good little slaves, beholding to their every asinine law.
So what's REALLY the "right way"?
Suffice to say, if government is the answer, it's likely a very stupid question. I think the "right way" is the way that preserves the communal resource with the least possible action of government... one that doesn't involve government theft from one person to benefit another.
