I voted "no," but I have broken the law while hunting. Now, before anyone calls me a liar or a hypocrite, I'll try to explain...though something tells me that those you need an explanation wouldn't understand, but I'll try.

I have broken hunting laws, but NEVER KNOWINGLY OR INTENTIONALLY. See, it takes knowledge and intent to really violate the law. Breaking some obscure, nonsensical, law that nobody knows about, put on the books by a inane, pencil pushing, desk jockey at the DNR or state house who couldn't tell the difference between poison ivy and an oak tree, is still breaking the law technically. However, IMO, if the hunter didn't know about it, and shouldn't reasonably have known, then I won't fault him for it. Same thing if it's unintentional. I once shot at a deer over a "fence line" into another property where I didn't have permission to hunt. Was it illegal, by the letter of the law... yes. The problem is that the "fence" was down along that stretch and grown over with brush, so it couldn't be seen and the deer was right on the other side. Could I have got a ticket for it, yep. Did I feel bad about it. Not really. Would I do it again knowing now where that fence is, no.

This year I hunted in Minnesota for the first time. I live in Iowa and was not familiar with the tags MN uses as they are very different from Iowa's tags, and since I got the license through the mail, I didn't know that the tag had to be signed upon receipt. Apparently, even though my name and address are printed on the tag, and I have a photo ID to prove who I am, that just isn't quite good enough for the MN DNR (see comment above re. pencil-pushers). So I got up there, I hunted, I shot my deer, tagged it, and got it back to the house where my brother noticed that I hadn't signed the license part of the tag and informed me that I should have signed it when I got the license and I could have got a ticket for it. We had had a DNR officer pull into my brothers driveway when we were out at the truck getting ready to go back out the first afternoon on opening day. He just wanted to know if we'd seen anything, but he didn't check our tags or anything. We chatted for maybe 10 minutes, with me totally oblivious to the fact that had he checked my license I could have got a ticket for a petty technicality. Maybe the fact that I was wearing my orange Iowa Hunter Safety Instructor vest saved me a small fine. So, did I break the law... again, yep. Does it make me a criminal by the spirit of the law... I don't think so.

Mike