I can see differing laws. For example, if you can take 5 black bears, whats the deal with loosing one if it happens? But if its a moose where there are few, or a brown bear where you get one every 4 years or such...
Obviously I hate to loose any animal. And I lost a deer last year. If we were in an area I could have used my dog, IE way to many burrs and he simply could not walk anymore... but we looked for that deer for a full day before we had to be back at work and found him the next weekend. Made me sick to my stomach. But it happened. In our case we need to take more deer than we do to control numbers so did not tag and were not required to.
Brings another question. One you can't legislate in words IMHO... well you can but it ends up being this one drop of blood law. So what if you KNOW there it is not a vital hit and will recover. It happens to folks. In fact sometimes you see the animal the next day or days and cannot get another shot. That happens. Animals receive far worse wounds at times due to nature and its cruelty.
I am not up on all legalities but another thing comes to mind. In Teds case mentioned here, if AK did not charge him with a violation, and thats what I think I recall reading from Art on this thread, then how can feds charge him with a Lacey act type violation. IE AK was ok and nothing illegal happened or they would have charged him. Feds can come in( would not surprise me as I worked for low level .gov until I got sick and tired of how crooked or not caring it was) and decide he did violate a STATE law even though not charged, so we'll charge him. Or can the feds charge against a state law first, then follow up with their ad ons?
Again not really taking sides so much here, just throwing out thoughts.
I've had the exposure to be able to shoot deer that were shot hours before, days before and weeks before. Doing it mostly out of curiosity. Amazing what animals can survive. Like even a hole through both lungs. Just flat amazing.
Bottom line if you don't like a law you have three choices. Follow it. Break it, get it changed. Easiest is to follow. Its what we do.
And one has to realize the fish and game folks are not perfect in anyones eyes, but they have a super tough job to do. Heck I'm not perfect either so its the way it is. We and they do their level best most of the time, and one has to applaud them for that.
