ORIGINAL: Sylvan
The balance of what you speak of is truly poaching, and is illegal, and the only way to stop that is through aggressive enforcement with some serious help from concerned and involved hunters...
I believe the procedure of a husband using a wife's tag to enable him to take 2 buck in a single season is common place and nearly impossible to stop. Calling a conservation officer to investigate such a violation is sadly a waste of time in most cases and the CO's know it. Not to mention that there are maybe 2 of them per region. What is to be done when the officer shows up only to find a deer with a properly filled out tag and the wife tells him of course she shot the deer and "what's the problem?". As a rule though, as bowkill mentioned, a lot of this takes place on private property and by the time anybody knows anything about it, the deer is processed, in the freezer, tags are filled out, and everybody envolved knows exactly what to say if a co were to show up which they probably won't even if they are informed. I hate to throw up my hands but I think I'm looking at it pretty realistically. It appears to me that, as a society, we just don't have the resources or the will to stop it. I'm afraid it just isn't that important to enough people.
And that is the dilemma. We may or may not have the resources to stop it. I think the Sportsmen's Clubs can do a ton of work in this area (hell, we already do, but we need to do more of the hard work) but the will to do it is another thing entirely (like, the clubs can sure do it from a resource standpoint - educating and reaching out, etc - but finding the volunteers wanting to help..... mingia, its hard enough to get some members to sell a couple raffle tickets...)
It is the way it is, and has been for quite a long time, since hunting seasons began, I would suspect.
But we have the interesting dynamic of hunter satisfaction, or dis-satisfaction acting as a rallying cry for more action. I have a question.... On the whole, not necessarily specifically to your hunting grounds, but as a whole, how do you think most hunters do their hunting?
Maybe a poll?
[ol][*]Ground Blind[*]Treestand[*]Still Hunt[*]Deer Drives with my hunting party[*]I just drive around with an arrow sticking out of the grill of my pick up truck, looking for crossing targets....[/ol]
That last answer was obviously a joke...
