Gigging Bust

[Old plug]

Hot Wally ----- your agent is correct and do is your prosecuting attorney. I believe the problem is with th law. The key word being TAKEN. Never did like the they use that word in the wildlife code in phases. I. Suppose it can be interpreted different ways. i believe though if the prosecutor wanted to he could go back and cite the intent of the law and that is to protect wildlife. That should make it simpler to prosecute. Maybe just has a lazy a---. Lots of them do.

[MOPanfisher]

I know of no agent that would write a ticket for accidentally sticking a gamefish.  It happens, rake it off, learn and go on, repeatedly doing it or trying to convince one that a crappie or catfish looked like a sucker should get a ticket.

[fishinwrench]

Bad as I hate to say it,  that is a really good reason to outlaw gigging entirely. If you stick it then it should be included in your creel.   

Can you sit there and pick off Woodpeckers and bluejays while squirrel hunting too ?  Just for target practice.

[Mitch f]

Yep, shoot a Canvasback by accident 10 years ago and try to use that for an excuse

[MOPanfisher]

It would be pretty hard to claim you mistook a blue jay for a squirrel.  Gigging, it happens with novices eapecially, the experienced one rag on them and they learn.  Pretty obvious difference between accidentally sticking one bass and.gigging like 8 of them.  Outlawing gigging based on that makes as much sense as making gamefish legal during gigging season.

[Old plug]

 I am not a lawyer or even have any formal legal training. But boy for many years I was involved with the Lawyers. From VA , ARMY and. A few others. I certainly learned that little and interpretations of them can make a big differance in what the law says versus what it is interpreted to mean. I will not go into details but I know one instance where the word OF has been through the legal mill and even the Supreme Court on several occasions. 

This is why I do worry about that word taken. It seems very clear to me just exactly what the writers of the code intended.  Truly it is about the only isonly choice to cancer all the bases. But this proscutor is perverting that meaning. found. He has his reason and I got  to question them. 

i would  like to see the words kill or harm worked into some place in the code. I have not seen anything in there. They need to make a clear determination and definition of that TAKEN as used in the code means to kill are harm and publish it in the code

 

[fishinwrench]

Harassing wildlife and wanton waste are covered clearly in the wildlife code I believe.   

[Gavin]

Guy I know got a ticket for molesting beavers a couple years ago...........Destroyed a beaver dam on one of the wild trout creeks, he is an engineer, but if you molest one beaver. As the old joke goes.

[Old plug]

The prosecutor had to deliberately make that call. Maybe he was the gigger. He preceverted he meaning of taken as it is meant to be. Sounds more like a slick defense attorney to me. 

[hoglaw]

21 hours ago, fishinwrench said:

Harassing wildlife and wanton waste are covered clearly in the wildlife code I believe.   

I know the AGFC book has something in it about it being illegal to "waste the edible portion of game" or something like that.  Not sure whether that's an actual "offense" or just something that's in the book about general ethics, but it would sure seem to cover sticking fish and not keeping them.  It also seems plausible that sticking a fish and throwing it back would still constitute "taking" the fish.  You took it out of the wild population.  Who cares what you did with it afterward?