I have a lot..a LOT of respect for our C.O's...they have a huge responsibility with very very little manpower. A friend was a C.O, and I wrote a couple of letters to his managers singing his praise--he was outstanding in every way.
Saying that, I wish they would concentrate on the real offenders vs the little stuff that can accidentally occur with hunters that are doing their very best to follow the letter of the law. Go after the poachers and the drive-by hunters and the trespassers. Our bush gets trampled by poaching and trespassing, yet a call to the authorities gets zero. Even a small grow operation with 30 plants resulted in..nothing.
Here are 2 true examples of getting very picky and wasting our conservation $$$...
One of the co- owners of our hunt property SM was in the controlled hunt in Dec a few years back. Its a sugar bush with lanes through out that we drive the tractor on to get at the buckets. He was way back in the bush with his little Ford Ranger planting a bucket of black walnuts in the middle of the day. It was raining, so he had his muzzle loader in the front seat of the truck to keep it dry. It had a load in it, but no cap on the nipple. It was uncased. He was 100 yards from the truck heeling in the walnuts. A C.O had entered the property, followed the lane way into the bush, found the truck. He checked to see if it had a charge in it, was aware it had no cap on. He saw SM, approached him, confirmed it was his truck and gun, charged him with hunting out of a motor vehicle. Remember, this truck was in the middle of a 100 acre bush at least 1/4 mile away from any traveled roadway. SM challenged it in court, got the support from the judge, however because of the wording of the law would have found him guilty, so SM pleaded no contest, got a minuscule fine and no record.
An elderly gentleman was hunting a friends farm during the shotgun hunt. He was partially disabled, so friends had made him a nice ground blind on a field edge by a bush. He was sitting in the blind in a chair they had supplied, and was having some difficulty moving around because of his clothes, vest, etc, so he took off his heavy orange vest, and draped it across the back of his chair....in a blind...so it was still visible. A few moments later, a C.O drove ACROSS the wheat field behind the gentleman and confronted him about not wearing hunter orange...he had been watching him with binoculars. The hunter got ticketed for not wearing the vest.
So, like Mick said, know the rules ...knowledge is your best defense.
