FRS RADIOS
 

The Ontario regs used to clearly state that you cannot use electronic devices to hunt game. However, 2003’s version makes no reference whatsoever.

We have the Motorola FRS radios when we are in the bush and use them solely for communicating success or times to leave the area. We do not use them to indicate deer movement or tactical movements in any way.

What is everyone’s impression on the possession of these in while in the bush? I’m sure the law still exists, so is mere possession enough to cause concern? Of course, this is likely another example of loosely written regulations that can be enforced on the whim of the CO.

Your thoughts?

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

I recall seeing that in the old reg' s myself, but as of last year I started using them. I looked high & low through the reg' s and didn' t find anything saying you can or can' t use them. I got 3 pair from a motorola rep buddy and plan on using them this year, if I get in $hit[:o], I' ll just ask them to show me where it says, I can' t use them...I absolutely love them in the field, even helped a lost buddy last year. :DJDinAB

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Just remember, the regulations that we see are a summary, usually - not the complete regulations as written - those usually take up volumes...

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

I have been told that (in Ontario) you can' t use radios or phones (cels) to aid in hunting. They can though be used for saftey purposes. They also told me that it would be up too the CO as to what is his/her opinion as to weither it is aiding in hunting or not.

I hunt with a partner that has a heart condition, if he needs to contact me we both have the radio and if that causes a problem with the CO' s then there will be a court battle. I believe that most CO' s are good and will use proper judgement with their use.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

:D Well everyone in our hunting camp carries FRS' s with them while in the bush....:)....unless the CO is standing with you, chances of him monitering your channels are slim & none so you just stick to your story....as party hunters we wnat to keep each other informed as to what tags we have left....afterall, we wouldn' t want to shoot a buck or doe is we didn' t have any tags left!!!!!!! [:-] Brampton Mike [8D]

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Don' t quote me on this
But I was informed last season that they were going to allow the radio' s tobe used as long as you could be reached within a specified time!
This was third party information that was suppose tobe coming from a MNR officer in Ignace!
AL

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

I found an article in Hunt Ontario which said the following:

" Be sure you know the game laws regarding party hunting before you use two-way radios, so you can stay within the law. Bill Fisher, enforcement supervisor for the Ministry of Natural Resources in Peterborough, said, " While there was some talk of introducing regulation on communication equipment in the past, nothing to date has become law, so the act of using a radio is not regulated with regard to game laws." However, when party hunting for big game, all hunters involved must be " actively hunting" in a particular area to be legal. Just having a two-way radio doesn' t mean you can sit in town while your buddies hunt.. "

I' ll ask my local CO. It' s better to know what the local authorities are doing as they' re the ones that I' ll have to deal with.

Dan O.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Dan O I would like to add to your post with something I was told by a CO as well as a few other people.

To party hunt, you have to be hunting together. That is, you have to be close by and easily able to contact others in your hunting party. This does not enclude the use or cel phones or portable radios in the use of contact. Basicly I was told that if they could not hear you (voice or siginalling device, eg. whistle) that they were deamed to not be hunting in your party.

Again I think this is Ontario' s laws going alittle to far away from what is intended. This was to stop people hunting while others stayed away then using their tags on animals.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Well Brampton Mike if the CO has a FRS radio and is within the range of your radio he can easily listen to your conversations. Actually anyone can with the scan option on the radio.

Last fall I heard the story of poachers hunting at night and using FRS radios. Someone listened to them on the radios when they picked them up on a scanner. The information was passed onto the MNR so I do imagine that some CO' s would have FRS radios because of this.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Grumpy to a certain extent you are right but with all the channels available on the FRS radios the chance of a CO locating which frequency we are transmitting on are slim & none unless we are carrying on extended conversations! ;) I do not disagree with what you are saying just stating that the chances are slim......regardless....our dogger uses the FRS to let us know when he is getting close to our watch or if he sees anything moving! Take care.....[:-]....Brampton Mike [8D]

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

what will they do about Hearing impaired hunters?
I have a buddy that doesn' t hear very well so he has a head set on so we can comunicate with him! Are we illegal for doing so?
AL

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Extremely interesting conversation going on in here.

Grumpy, you say you have to basically be within voice range of each other. Unbelievable. A bunch of guys with high powered rifles that close together?????

We hunt an area about 1 or 2 kms wide by 1 km deep (the width depends on the numbers in the party). Only 5 of us have FRS' and it would be up to us to inform the others (either by walking over and informing them or by firing a pre-determined number of shots-carefully of course;)).

It doesn' t make sense that we' d have to be that close. I know this isn' t your opinion but what you' ve heard.

Once again, another set of rules that everyone isn' t exactly clear on.

Later,

Mike

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Taxman003 I know what you mean. I too think this rule is stupid. I believe that if your in a real hunting camp (group) that should be all that is needed for party hunting. But even in saying that, you or your group would be totally responsible in making sure that you did not kill something that you can not legally tag.

In my old deer camp, one of the watches was aprox. 3 miles away from the others. It was just in a different dirrection from our camp. Moose camps and deer camps usually have hunters spread apart further than voices will travel.

But in saying all of my opinions against it, I can see why they have the rule like this. Some people will buy a tag and never go hunting. They will stay in the house while others will fill their tags for them. It is too bad how some cause trouble for the rest of us.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

A friend of mine showed me a new one he bought this past week ,,, A gremlin I think , it is setup with a GPS and can locate all you hunting partners out there with out talking to them. It is the neetest thing I seen. Has a clip on it to keep in in your pocket...BT

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Does anyone know why the GMRS radios (the 5 mile one) are not allowed to be sold in Canada. One the 2 mile FRS style is allowed.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

GT; are you sure that you can' t buy the longer range radio if you have a license?

Dan O.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Dan O I have my VHF radio operators licience as do my father and brother. I tried today to purchase a pair from Cabella' s and they told me that they could not sell to me in Canada. It could be just a another time that they have just deceided not to sell to a Canadian Customers. But, I have not been able to find any of the GMRS radios in Canada, so maybe they are correct.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

GT; what frequency do they operate at? I was just wondering if they operate on the same channels as the FRS radios or use other frequencies.

Dan O.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

GT.
My Audiovox GMRS 122-2 were purchased through E-bay or check with your local Motorola dealer. Mine said he could set me up with radios if I was interested!
DanO reading the book here and some of my channels operate at a 462.5500 MHz -462.7250 MHz These are the GMRS only channels IO also have 7 shared channels and 7 FRS only channels
AL

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Dan O like littleal said there are some GMRS only chanels, some shared chanels, and some FRS only chanels. This is on the GMRS only you get 5 mile range, on the FRS only chanels you are limited to the FRS range. Now these ranges are depend on terrain.

littleal I know people have had them shipped into Canada, but I have not found them for sale in Canada. I have even asked about them and all they would say was that they do not sell them.

I was just wondering if there was any regulations on them from being sold in Canada or if Cabella' s just deceided to not sell to Canada.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

On topic, only as regards the fact you can' t trust the sumary: Last year they had this thing in the sumary about how you couldn' t cast light at an animal, and when I checked about laser range finders, they were a little embarassed, and said no problem. Technology sure is difficult to keep up with.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

GT; the attached link gives a good outline of the differences between frs and gmrs:


http://www.compusmart.ab.ca/resqdyn/...CommLeader.pdf


The gmrs appears to be the commercially licensed version of the frs.

Dan O.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Dan O I finally did get an answer for the problem I was having getting GMRS in Canada. Acording to someone int the know in the Canadian Government, GMRS radios are not legal for use or sale in Canada as of yet. This gentleman told me that they are in the process of passing them into usage.

Currently in the USA you need a licience to operate a GMRS radio, but in Canada there will not be the need for a licience when they come available. HE told me that they should be available in the spring or summer 2004, maybe a little latter. Also that GMRS radios are up to a maxium or 5 watts but generally they are produced at a maxium of 2 watts (most only at 1).

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

GT; please check the above link. It is a Canadian source. It says that GMRS radios are being licensed now. We license 2 or 5 watt Motorola radios in the mentioned frequencies for use at our manufacturing facility. It' ll be interesting to see if they come out with unlicensed versions in that power range.

Dan O.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Dan O I believe that your talking about private industral chanels for this type of radios. Here is the link to a site I was given
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_mrksv/s...oc/spect1.html .

The gentleman I was talking with was named David Warnes. He is the Senior Advisor, Spectrum Policy, Industry Canada. Spectrum is the office that over looks the radio waves in Canada. They control who is allowed to use what. My MP' s office contacted him on my behalf and then passed the phone to me to talk with him.

This is my understanding from the converstation. The reason GMRS is not allowed in Canada right now is because some of the private industral channels under contract to people are in conflect with the open channels of the GMRS. Those people and their private channels will have to be moved (assigned radio freqs.) to eliminate the conflect at a cost of which the GMRS manufactures will have to cover. The open GMRS channels will not have to be licienced in Canada to use them, but if you use the private industral channels you will still need a licience. The private channles restricts the channel to just you and not anyone else to cut in on you.

About the wattage of the GMRS. They are limmited to 5 watts maxium, but the open channels are usually manufactured to 2 watts but normally only 1 watt currently. In my opinion this is to allow growth in a few years to keep sales going.

Sorry I could not for some reason get your link to come up. All I got was a blank page and Acrobat Reader [:@].

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

The company that I work for is using several licensed channels, that' s why I couldn' t understand why you said the radios aren' t in use in Canada or if the radios that we' re using were gmrs.

Try the following link:

http://www.provide.net/~prsg/wi-gmrs.htm

Dan O.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Dan O the site you list above I believe is an Anerican site. They list as the US/Canadian boarder as lines you can' t operate north of. Further down in the site they talk about 18 different States. I was confused (not difficult to do) until I read and figured out it is an American site.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

GT;the first link was the Canadian (Alberta) link. The last one was just for information purposes. The first should load if your firewall settings are on low and you' re accepting cookies.

http://www.compusmart.ab.ca/resqdyn/...CommLeader.pdf

Dan O.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

Dan O all I get from your first link is a blank page. It sends me to " Acrobat Reader" and another page, but then it loads nothing, leaving a blank page [&o].

But acording to David Warnes, at the present times, GMRS are illegal in Canada. There were a few retailers that did sell them, but his agency shut them down (had them pull them from the shelves). When I told him that an American Store would not ship into Canada, he praised that store [:@]. I guess that I can wait for another year before I can get a pair of GMRS radios. I just wanted to have a greater range for my dad, he is in his 70' s and has heart problems. He still hunts and fishes. I hope when I get his age, that I will be able to continue to hunt and fish like he does.

RE: FRS RADIOS
 

GT; the 5 watt CB portable radios have an approx. 5 mile range. At the end of the CB craze they were going very cheap for the 40 channel units and you can still find them in second hand stores. They' re not as small as the GMRS radios but they' ll do what you' re asking.

Sometimes with the links, I get them working by chopping the last few backslashes and then walking through the website manually.

Dan O.