I faced this dilemma about a month ago. Had a deer come within 10 yards of my stand just at that point when I wasn’t sure if it was too dark to shoot. I drew back and tried to sight through my peep. I couldn’t see the kill zone clearly, so I let down my draw and, unfortunately, spooked the deer. It was a cloudy day and definitely within legal shooting hours, but too dark to shoot.

I don’t keep a stopwatch to see if it’s exactly within the legal shooting times. It’s either too dark to take a clean shot or it’s not. A lot of factors come into play: my natural night-time vision (which is about average), my skill with the bow, the distance to the deer, the angle of the shot and, of course, how much light there is, which is affected by cloud cover, moon phase, etc.

I’m with Rob on this. My ethics aren’t solely determined by what’s legal. Sometimes doing what’s legal isn’t what’s most ethical. Look at requirements to turn in Jews in Germany or Poland during the Holocaust. Was not doing the legal thing unethical then? I don’t think so. David, I am pretty sure you didn’t mean to make a blanket statement when you said “From a hunters stand point and to do the right thing, I'd say illegal is never ethical,” but I don’t think that statement applies to all situations, as you yourself seemed to indicate. If I saw a wounded deer suffering and it was after dark, I’d shoot it in a heartbeat, with qualms whatsoever.