Thursday, September 6, 2007

Another Story about the Rule of the Conservation Officer, NOT Law: Send Your Story

In another story on this blog I describe a phone call with an assistant commissioner of the DNR in which I was told that the practical application of the regulations in the field, "case by case" is pretty much up to the local conservation officer. So apparently, you might be guilty in front of one of them, and innocent in front of another, for doing the same thing, where the regulations are subject to substantial interpretation. If you have a story illustrating this kind of discretionary power, send it to tomdahlberg5000@aol.com.

Here's a story that I received recently.

A private landowner's agricultural field was being assaulted on a grand scale by black bears. According to reports, close to 20 different bears appeared in about 3 days.

Several hunters acquired nuisance bear permits from the local CO who insisted to the land owner: "You have to shoot the first bear you see, no hunting for big bears".

Now considering the fact that for some guys a 150 pound bear would be a dream come true, and for others a 400 pound bear might be a disappointment, the CO's order wasn't exactly useful to begin with.

Nevertheless, he apparently repeated his warning over and over again, even visiting the landowner on a couple of occasions to check up on how the hunters with nuisance tags were doing around the field in question. Two hunters shot bears over 400 pounds, and the CO was upset about it.

At least one hunter decided to wait until season opener rather than hunt using the nuisance tag because the CO seemed to be on the warpath.

The problem here is that once the nuisance tags are issued, because the bears (plural) are destroying the crop, how can the CO start micro-managing who shoots or does not shoot which bear? What if all one sees is a bear's rump as it enters the field? What if the bear is walking vs. standing? What if the bear is 400 yards away vs. 100 yards away, and so on? With dozens of bears hammering an agricultural field, why would the DNR care which bear anyone shoots as long as they shoot a bear? Why issue the tags and then behave as if it's a crime to use them?

Would the CO, in order to prohibit big bear hunting, have endorsed the taking of cubs -- say, with a .300 Winchester magnum? And if only the land owner himself could do that, why that exception? It's just ad hoc regulation without a foundation in legislation. Were the tag holders just supposed to shoot at anything that looked like a bear? How smart would that be?

By trying to regulate the situation after the fact, all the CO could do is make the law up as he went. This is bad law-making. Any number of theoretical situations that would prevent a hunter from harvesting any given bear can be imagined and, given enough COs, micro-managed if the unlawful, undocumented premise is that a big bear (whatever that means) should never be taken with a nuisance permit. If it's a big bear that happens to BE the nuisance bear, should the CO require that the tag holder feel extremely sorry after shooting him? Would that make it all good? Is the CO just looking for some kind behavior or deportment from the hunter that says: "I'm so sorry that the nuisance is a large bear by my standards. And even though you, the CO, agreed that this is a nuisance bear, I understand that you should be extremely irritated about that because....well, just because."

In this case, if the CO was actually anti-hunting, he shouldn't be working the beat. Apparently the CO made the hunters feel that they were guilty until proven innocent of wanting a big bear -- some kind of thought crime.

What was the land owner supposed to do? Tolerate the loss of thousands of dollars worth of his crop so no one could get a big bear under a nuisance tag?

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