Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Who here has gotten a tickett wile hunting.....

I for one have not, but have seen others get one.

Been alongside guys getting tickets. One had a poorly plugged shotgun. One was a kid who shot a spike elk by mistake.
Probably some others too.

When I was 21 I got a hunting out of season ticket. I was hunting ducks on a small pond on what i thought was the last day of the season and never fired a shot. When walking back to the vehicle we where stopped by a CO. He asked what we were doing and if we had shot anything. Duck season had closed the day before and we were a day late..
If I indeed was trying to shoot ducks out of season I would have lied and said I was rabbit hunting...

I got a speeding ticket one time trying to get to my turkey spot before daylight. Hurrying turned out to be counter productive.

That's it.

Leemar28: I have been Hunting Big Game and Varmints and fishing for 55+ years and have never "gotten a ticket" - hope to continue that streak for about 20 more years.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I got one about 5 years ago for tresspasing,never saw the marker. One of the worse feelings ever.
BBJ

The wrist r I'd when a truly honest mistake turns into something bigger in the end. Never suffered this but feel very badly for those who have.

Just after Labor Day my family was all together for a picnic on our family farm. Most of us were in the swimming pool when it started thundering and raining. We all looked confused and befuddeled because there were no clouds. Turned out it was four city boys hunting our POSTED field where we let the colts run; the thunder was them shooting doves, the rain was their #8 falling in the pool.. My brother got the barn gun (an ancient Iver Johnson single barrel 16 gauge and a handful of #8s that we used to knock down doves for dinner and started to sneak around the barn. I knew his temper and stopped him before it got nasty. I asked my mom to call the local cops who knew us all since we were tiny tykes and took the shotgun and calmly held what turned out to be a local aldertman and his friend the Superior Court Judge at gunpoint. The ticket was for restraining a legally licensed hunter. Still hangs in the den in a cheap frame. It is good for a laugh on Labor Day.

Great Memories!

Terry

Never received a ticket out in the field, but then again i try not to get caught.

Three years ago I received a $40.00 ticket from a Colorado game officer after reporting myself for shooting a "spike" bull, while holding a "cow" tag. He instructed me to gut the animal after viewing the carcass and informed me that I could have received a $3500.00 - $4000.00 ticket if he had caught me with the illegal "kill". This occured from taking a 250 yd. shot across a meadow at first light at what I thought was a cow. Leupold 3x9, not quite enough light gathering as I thought. Boy o Boy did my heart sink that morning,after seeing those antlers, with what had to be the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen in the Rockies. The animal was to be donated to a certain food bank in the Denver area.

bluesman-just cant win sometimes. i had one similar that did not involve hunting. just the guns. the lawyer said they cant file charges against you. but they did and they got out of it.

My friends and I got ticketed for hunting over a baited field once. We didn't do it (we really didn't) and took Johnny Green Pants to court and won the case.

His wife worked for me and I knew him to be crooked as hell from personal experience. I work for USDA, and knew him to go to some of my farmer's grain bins and take out shelled corn, put it in an envelope and call it "exhibit A" when he got to court on cases in the past. And I'll be danged if the crooked ol guy didn't try that same trick on us. I was able to prove, in court, that beyond the shadow of a doubt his evidence was fabricated. Case dismissed.

Life's a circle...what goes around comes around, and he and his wife got what was coming to them eventually. I only know a handful of them that are as honest as they portray themselves to be.

Came closs in Colorado when I shot a large running 5x6 bull with my 375 H&H using 260 gr Partitions. The bull rolled at the shot dead. Seconds later I heard crashing in the brush below. I ran to look and there was a 3x3 bull down with head up so I shot again and ended it. I never saw the second bull running behind the first. There were a total of 12 elk with 5 bulls all around 50 yards away. We gutted them both out, put them in the shade in a snowy area and headed down the mountain to the DoW office. We knew the DoW guy as had met him many times in our camp and in rather remote places as well. A good guy who had steered us to areas he had seen elk. He met with us and advised what the fines, etc., could be but was very pleased we let him know what happened and respected the wildlife. He and a partner each took myself and my hunting partner aside and had us each tell our story separately. Of course we told the same story, the truth, so they were pleased with that. He told us to bring the quarters down the mountain in the next day keeping them together per elk. Late in the evening the next day we called him advising we were down with the elk. He asked us to meet him behind a gas station after dark which we did. He then layed each quarter out as we related the story again to confirm the bullet paths agreed with what we had said. Of course they did. He asked us to load the second one shot, head and quarters onto his truck. He advised he knew a needy family in town that would enjoy the meat. He closed with something along the lines of, "Now don't ever do something so irresponsible again. You are experienced hunters I know, so demonstrate it". Done.

Tony,

Stories like that are what I wish we heard more often. Unfortunately, it seems many G&F officers are anxious to hand out tickets instead of realizing even the more responsible hunters are human and can and will make mistakes. It takes a real man to not only admit when they were/are wrong, but to go to the law office and turn themselves in. I think if more people did that, seeing stories like yours would be more common.

That G&F officer showed class in not only letting you off the hook, but donating the meat to a needy family act. Class act, that guy is!

Only got one ticket in the last 40 years because I trusted my buddy and his dad.

It was in the early 80's and we were hunting deer in Wyoming. Even though I wanted to pin down where we were hunting exactly and get the topo map they convinced me it was unecessary. Turns out we were all hunting in the wrong unit but I was the only one that got caught. Luckily I hadn't killed a deer but I learned the hard way that non-resident fines have to be paid in cash ($100). Learned my lesson and since then I make sure I get my maps squared away.

No convictions.

I took a rag bull down very deep in a canyon the day before I had to leave to go back to work. The next morning me and my buddies packed the quarters and straps out in 3 trips. 1400 vertical feet each pack. The only thing left was the antlers to get, but it was getting late. At the end of the third trip, we got stopped as we crested by a GW and he checked the license and tag. I showed him a time-stamped picture of the bull on my camera and told him I was running really late and was worried about losing my job if I didn't get back. He said I had to take him to the kill site to show him the rack. I was too fatigued to go back down into the canyon. He gave me a choice. Take him to the rack, or he'd write me a ticket. How much? $75 bucks. Done!

He met us back at our camp, wrote me the ticket, and then... seized the meat. I was torqued. He never said THAT was part of the deal. They took it to the county jail. Bastard.

Never got one wile hunting. Don't hunt wiles.

No tickets ever. I am very careful to avoid getting into those situations. Preparation goes a long way, hunting with the right people goes a long way and knowing the law goes a long way!

The part in bold is the truth. One of my hunting buddies has a friend that tries to come along with us sometimes. I always say no because I know that that guy is trouble.