ORIGINAL: R.S.B.
ORIGINAL: Windwalker7
I'm still trying to find out why I was checked for taking a camera into the woods to film deer.
Why did I have to show my drivers license?
Why did they check my hunting license?
I could have been wearing my grandmother's hunting license on my back and it should not have mattered. I had no weapon on my person and was entering private property.
A few on here support this practice of checking and searching for no reason. So I ask you.
Why would two WCO's check my licence, driver's license, check out my video camera, pushing all the buttons and taking the video tape out. WHY?
I don’t have any idea what occurred in your case but I do know that there are some really good reasons to check people with a video camera when it appears they may be part of a hunting situation, in season or out of season.
Every WCO out there has had illegal hunts videoed, including many out of season hunts. A few years back there were a couple of big name hunters caught doing just that here in various areas of the state and they had it all on video tape. Over the years I have seen a lot of illegal hunts, including the kills, put on video.
Perhaps when the Officers saw you with the camera it fit some other previous bit of information they had and they felt a need to confirm what you were or weren’t doing. Or, perhaps this was during that same time period we were looking for the guys that we knew were filming illegal hunts.
Incidentally it would have been illegal for you to have had grandma’s license or anyone else’s license with you in the field that day even if you didn’t have a gun. I’m not saying you would have been cited if you had grandma’s license and wasn’t hunting but you certainly could be.
Dick Bodenhorn
WCO, Elk County
Let me get this straight. Are you saying that it is illegal to wear a jacket, with someone else's license on it, in the woods even if you are on private property, armed just with a camera? What if I was just taking a walk? Are you saying it is illegal to wear another person's license all together? If this is true, it is not right.
By the way, This was back about 1988. VHS cameras had only been out for about a year.There were very few hunting videos on the market then. There were a couple out from Knight and Hale and Bob McGuire.
The officers seemed real interested in it. I could tell they never handled one before. They were pushing buttons and asking how to get the tape out. Don't ask me why they felt they needed to eject the tape.
I was alone so why would they think I was filming an illegal hunt? I guess if I had a 35mm camera in my hand, they wouldn't be concerned?