Buck Hollow Sporting Goods - click or touch to visit their website Midwest Habitat Company

Shining

D&D Flesheaters

D&D Flesheaters

Owner of D&D Flesheaters
Was driving through this past weekend and saw somebody shining. I was under the impression that this was illegal. Am I wrong?
 
I do not think that it is illegal but I would not want to have a firearm or bow in the vehicle. As far as I know, there is nothing illegal about it.
 
I was with my son one night shining deer in the city and we got stopped. I had a 3" knife in my console and the officer said that was a weapon and technically I could be cited, he said officers in other counties have cited for knives while shining. I didn't get cited and I about choked and had to hold back my laughter. Like I'm going to jump out of my vehicle and stab the deer...

Only time I can move that fast is when the wife says, "dinners ready" or she starts purring.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Only time I can move that fast is when the wife says, "dinners ready" or she starts purring.

[/ QUOTE ]

evil.gif
 
Even though it is technically legal to shine, it can still be considered harrasing the wildlife under certain situations and you can be cited for this. One game warden told me that they are getting called out of bed in the middle of the night so often to go check on spotlighters that they are doing a very thorough check and writing tickets for anything they find: missing license plate lights, no seatbelt, etc. to try to get people to stop. They have no idea if you are out doing it legally or if there is a truck full of poachers with loaded weapons awaiting them. I personally wish they would change the law and not allow it - poaching is bad enough around here and if that would help slow poaching, I would be all for it.
 
Wow, people's opinions vary greatly on this topic. I used to do this when I was in high school, but know that a lot of deer get poached this way. I am a high school teacher now and the high school boys do this almost every night. One of these kids "hit one with his car" recently that scored over 170". The CO confiscated it as far as I know because the kid never got a salvage tag. I highly doubt he "hit it with his car." I would be in favor of outlawing shinning in Iowa, at least during the hunting seasons. I know this would not eliminate poaching, but it sure would make it a lot tougher to poach at night.What do the rest of you think?
 
In Minnesota you can shine until 10pm with out any weapons in the vehical or they are in the "closed trunk" of a vehical.

I shine a fair amount with a buddy. You really get an idea of the number of deer in your area and wher ethey happen to be feeding at. A friend killed a decent buck this year that we scouted entirly from spotlight. We figured where he was feeding, where he was coming from. And one quick afternoon walk across a friendly farmers field showed where the buck bedded.

Dean
 
Laws are only for honest people anyway. I believe that if you take away shining the only people who would stop doing it are the people who are doing it legally. I truly believe that it would do nothing to stop poaching by way of spot light. People spotlighting get stopped by law enforcement anyway even though it is now legal. I know that the game wardens are the ones who the biggest burden of catching poachers falls on, but I think that it is silly to think that if spotlighting is banned then they are going to be able to focus their attention to the decoys and other means of catching poachers. These guys are already spread so thin that they run their asses of going from call to call during hunting seasons. The deputies in your area should be checking rural areas as well. If they're not call the local SO and request that they do. If I were to suspect someone of poaching I would first call the Sheriff-they're response time is probably going to be alot faster since you won't have to get them out of bed (these guys can't work 24 hours a day). If they catch someone and can get them stopped the game warden can handle it after that.
As long as there are deer in Iowa-big or little- there are going to be people killing them illegally. We can just hope that sometime they slip up and get caught. Until the state makes an effort to control poaching with more manpower we're going to be stuck with finding headless deer shot with rifles. We simply cannot expect one CO per county to curb poaching problems.

Now that I got that out let me get off of this
893soapbox-thumb[1].gif
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom