How would it be enforceable? I can imagine a lot of scenarios where it’s basically going to be on the honor system. Based on the other threads we see about ethics on here I don’t hold a lot of hope on voluntary punching the tag no matter the law.
Even if it is not "enforceable" it will hold sway over what, I hope, are the majority of hunters who are ethical. If that means the law abiding hunters behave better, fewer animals will be wasted. Not perfect, but I think in this case the good outweighs the perfect in terms of reducing wanton waste. Oftentimes the law helps us make the right decision in a grey area.
I've hunted 50 of my 60 years on this earth. More if you count all the innocent song birds I murdered with my BB gun and pellet gun. I started in little early on the deer hunting. I've said on HT before that I did not come from an ethical hunting family. We party hunted and if you could shoot, you were put on the kill box for the drivers pushing the deer in. (BTW - This is why I cringe when Doug Duren extols the virtues of his "Mooching" technique. )
In those years I've been guilty of "bykill" when I didn't realize there was a doe standing perfectly in front of the buck I shot at. Thankfully not a pass-through kill on the buck. (Thank you, Sierra GK frangible bullets...) I've been guilty of failing to "keep hammering" on elk I have blooded, and more recently than I want to admit. I've failed to follow up on a "missed" shot taken. (Young and dumb enough to shoot across the Selway River when I didn't have canoe.) I've hit and lost elk with a muzzle loader. I've tipped over two turkeys with one shot. If I sit here long enough I will remember other bad choices. At some level all these are bad choices rather than accidents. Doesn't every accident start with a bad decision?
Long way to say I'm not virtue signalling. But now at 60, I've come to the place where if I pull the trigger I'm done for the day. If I find blood or hair, I'm going to be tracking. I wounded a cow this year. I spent two days looking for that dead cow, and the rest of the season hunting for that exact cow still alive. In the end, I punched my tag meatless. The truth is that I had a chance to put another one in her when I shot her, but my brain froze up. That's on me.
Let's be honest, any of us who can afford a rifle or modern bow can afford an awful lot of beef. We are not going to starve. Our family will not go hungry if we don't get an animal. I know a lot of guys who brag they only eat game meat. I say BS. If they have a season of tag soup, they will eat beef too. Hunger is a great motivator.
We need to be honest with ourselves first before throwing stones, but having examined ourselves, throw the damned things.
Rant almost over...
These threads always take me to my favorite bitch, hunters who think a muzzle loader, even a .54, will knock an elk on it's ass. They don't. I find dead elk every December and it boils my butt and chaps my hide, in that order exactly. Know your range and follow up on your shots! My local warden probably hates seeing my number when his cell phone dings because he knows I'm sending him pics and a grid location. Some guy will reply to this post that HE shot an elk with a muzzy and it was dead right there. Good for you, two inches one way other the other or ten yards of distance might change your outcome. I've shot a bunch of critters with a .54 and it ain't always a sure kill.
OK Rant over.
Sounds like typical rifle hunters to me, slobs.
It does nothing for our image to the outside world when anyone can come in here to HT and read hunters writing that they shot and lost an animal, but it's their right and the coyotes need to eat, too. It's not that it happens, IMHO, its the attitude we present about it. Then you have the "We knew it was going to be a gunfight." Bullshit. No Kryptek for me ever after that fiasco, and I'm an Idaho product bigot.
I'm past the "hunters sticking together" crap. I will defend cultural practices, but never slobbery or the lowest common denominator. I grew up seeing deer shot with a .22 and an arrow stuck in them in case the warden was encountered. We get slobs because we tolerate slobs. The non-hunting public lumps us in with the slobs because we tolerate the slobs. The non-hunting public does not give two shits when we say, "that guy isn't a hunter, he's a poacher." They don't give two shits whether Dim Dumbo knew or intended to kill a second elk. The Warden in the OP had discretion in citing the offender. None of us can deduce the CO's motives in not citing, regardless of what he said to the OP. We can't get into his head on this.
...Education is where this should start...
Maybe we just make new hunters go through a class. We could call it, "Hunter's Education". We could teach them about target identification, having a solid backstop,shoot-don't shoot situations, hunting ethics and the like.
would step in to prove otherwise.
