Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Dumbest hunting laws

It's weird down here I tell ya. You can shoot critters but not a-holes. .

Minimum .23 caliber for big game in VA is idiotic. Especially since it's legal in every state that borders it and 75's in a 223 trump anything in a 6x45....


Sunday's on private land is fine with me, don't care either way.

But I hate f-n deer hunting dogs....

Having both archery hunters and muzzle loader hunters in the same time frame in the woods,but only muzzle loader hunters have to wear blaze orange in Colorado.Should be both or neither.

Shotgun only deer states

It can be a big deal if you an out of sate hunter and you are late getting out there, done that!!!

Wyoming used to have an energy requirement for hunting big game with handguns that specified published velocity of 500 ft lbs at 100 yards. That pretty much meant .41 Magnum or better. The law changed in the last couple of years to allow (in part) for bighorn sheep, elk, moose, mountain goat or black bear :

"Any center-fire firearm of at least .24 caliber and firing a cartridge of at least two (2) inches in overall length, or any other cartridge of at least .35 caliber and at least one and one-half inches (1.5) in overall length, and using an expanding point bullet; or . . ."

Now, the way I read that, I could get a 2" S&W J frame .357 magnum revolver, load an expanding point bullet in a .357 magnum case to over 1.5 inches COL in front of 4 grains of 231, and be legal, while the best Underwood/Double Tap/Buffalo Bore 10 mm round fired out of a Colt Delta Elite won't meet the criteria. Sometimes, good ideas don't get implemented in the best possible manner.

If you are talking about a conservation stamp, it is because you only need one stamp no matter how many licenses you buy. Most license sellers will ask you if you need one whenever you purchase a license.

Here in New Mexico there are two extra stamps required to hunt doves if you are hunting in certain areas. Both are free and are just an extra click of the mouse when printing your license.

They make no sense whatsoever. Last year I had them and my friend didn't when the warden checked our licenses. The warden informed my buddy that he was missing the required stamps and that is all that happened. He could have actually ticketed him but we got the impression that even the wardens thought it was an asinine regulation.

The other one that bugs me is the no dove hunting in many states that have plenty. Doves are migratory. Don't shoot them in one state and they'll get shot in another.

Oh, and I'll throw in the retarded no Sunday hunting laws also...

Sure ya' can.....................



if you're an Uber driver!

Geno

Not true. You can hunt small game with a larger than .23 dia. IF you have an unfilled big game license and if I remember right there are different rules that allow small game/small caliber east of the I-25 corridor.

jimy,

Please explain why a person who lives in the center of PA should be required to obtain a non-resident license and/or tags, drive however many miles, and do all this on their only day off makes any logical sense at all? After all, are they citizens of the Commonwealth or not?

It might work somewhat, excluding the added expense, for those who live close to a bordering state, but still seems rather odd to me.

Geno

MT had a law that a person cannot use a game camera during any hunting season. So from 15 August to sometime in June a person couldn't use them. Odd thing about that regulation is it wasn't even law. I talked to a game warden about it and he said someone just put it in the regs, but here was no law to back it up. He still took came cameras though that he found during season since it was in the regs. Not following written regulations is what he based it on.

The one I hate the most is having to pay to use state land to recreate on.

I agree that this one is the absolute dumbest.

In shotgun-only deer states, you can hunt with, for example, a sabot-rifled 300gr slug leaving the shotgun muzzle at 2,000 fps:
https://winchester.com/Products/Ammunition/Shotshell/XP3/SXP123

But you can’t hunt with, for example, a 45-70 rifle throwing the same size bullet at a slower speed: https://www.midwayusa.com/product/2...vernment-300-grain-jacketed-hollow-point

I think the entire shotgun-only deer rule is nonsensical, but if they were even going to try to make it make sense, they should have an upward velocity limit; rather than limiting the hunting to a certain type of firearm that can fire bullets at rifle velocities.

In the mid-1990s, my brother moved from a sparsely-populated area of Indiana, where he had to hunt deer with a shotgun, to Charlottesville, Virginia. Soon after moving, he went to a G&A store, and asked the old-timer running it a bunch of questions about nearby places to shoot, hunt, fish, etc. … The old-timer patiently answered all of his questions in an informative manner. As my brother was leaving, he thanked the man, and then said: “One more question, can you hunt deer with a rifle here”? The old man walked up to my brother, put his hand on his shoulder, and sympathetically told him: “Son, you south of the Mason-Dixon line now.”

As I can recall in my old age.

PA: having to wear hunter orange while squirrel hunting with my bow for squirrel while walking to my deer hunting area. The no Sunday hunting has been discussed. And the no-semi auto firearms for deer hunting, but slide and lever action are allowed.

All states: residency laws. When a person moves for a "permanent" position and moves all their scheidt cross country, changes driver's license,insurance, start paying State and Local taxes, perhaps buys a residence or signs a lease on a place and so on, yet they are not considered a "resident" for hunting/fishing purposes for 3-12 months depending on the state. Honestly............a person does all that just to save a couple of hundred $$$ on a license?

CA: how about this one I think is still on the books..............If the wildlife folks determine a need for a doe season the County Board of Supervisors gets to say yeah or nay. Smart, eh? County Supervisors making game law decisions.

WA: I could not hunt grouse in an area with an open big game season with my 25-20 pistol if I did not also possess a valid big game tag for that unit. I could with a .22, but not the pistol I would choose to use. (yes, I sort of understand their reasoning............sort of but mostly not)

NY: at least I think it was this way back in '99. During deer season one could only use a shotgun in some areas but it was perfectly fine to sit in farmer John's field and shoot woodchucks with a centerfire rifle...............


Geno

Usually dogs and shotguns.....and a pile of f-n drunks. They'll get some mutt from the pound and let it chase anything that moves. If you hear one shot, it was at a beer can or stop sign.......it takes 3 shots to kill a deer.

I hear you Cheyenne. Clearly some clueless person was trying to keep the weak rounds from being used for hunting. I get that. The answer is as simple as a min. caliber and min. muzzle energy. Say .35 caliber or larger with a min. muzzle energy of 550 ft. lbs. It's really that easy.

OMG completely forget about that one. When I moved to Colorado 15 years ago, I had CO driver's license, was employed, was paying state taxes, had a house, and registered both of our cars here, but couldn't buy a resident elk tag. Was livid. If I remember right, we had 30 days to register our cars and get local driver's licenses or we could be fined as avoiding state fees (which were about $600 more per vehicle than the state I came from.) If I had the money, I'd have taken the DOW to court just out of principle. I'd probably have lost because some loophole law that lets the DOW make their own rules, but it was, and still is, asinine. You either are a resident of the state or not.

In Idaho they are as long as they're still attached to a front quarter. Likewise for does or cows during an anterless season.

The whole proof of sex thing has always bugged me. How is a hunter's sex life any of their business?

In CA you must use non lead shot for Turkeys but you can shoot them with a lead pellet out of a pellet gun