Is It Illegal To Use Game Cameras While Hunting

Trail cameras are everywhere in the hunting world these days. Twenty years ago, yous might have known a couple hunters who had them. But today, information technology seems like every hunter has at to the lowest degree one – if non several.

Let's face it. They're useful. They tin can prove you what'southward happening in your favorite hunting spot when y'all're not there.

Through the years, game cameras have gotten more than advanced. Movie has been replaced by digital recording. Flashes have been replaced by infrared night vision. You lot can shoot video and/or still photos.

Ane nagging matter about trail cameras since they commencement came out has been that you must go to them to recover the photos they took. That ways dragging your human olfactory property and noise into areas that maybe you'd adopt were left undisturbed unless yous're hunting.

Given that nuisance, it was inevitable that camera manufacturers would come up with a way to have cameras send photos to you lot, so y'all don't have to physically get out to your cameras on a regular footing.

THE NEW BREED

The HCO Spartan GoCam Wireless Scouting Photographic camera utilizes Verizon'due south advice network to ship photos to your phone, tablet or computer via email every bit shortly equally they are taken.

Moultrie makes the Mobile Wireless Field Modem MV1, which is a separate device that connects to sure trail cameras so that it can instantly send you photos via e-mail or text messages.

And in that location are a scattering of other devices on the market place that offering the like services, equally well.

So basically, you can be sitting at your desk at work, your phone vibrates, y'all look at it, and there'due south a photo of a nice buck that just walked past your trail camera that might exist down the road, many miles away or in some other land.

That kind of instantaneous information near game movement raises an interesting question here in Pennsylvania.

The Game Commission has a general ban on using electronic devices to alert y'all or a hunting partner that game is coming your way.

The state's digest of hunting regulations doesn't specifically refer to game cameras in that chapters, but it does state that "cell phones may be used for full general communications with some other hunter, but may not exist used to directly or alert some other hunter of the presence or location of alive game or wild animals.

"The use of electronic communication devices to alert hunters to live game not merely is a violation of the Game & Wildlife Code, but violates the concept of fair chase."

So doesn't that sentence automatically mean trail cameras – particularly the ones capable of sending out photos – are illegal to utilize here during hunting season?

THE LEGAL WORD

LNP asked the Game Commission that very question, in response to inquiries we've heard from local hunters.

Bureau spokesman Travis Lau said upward front that it is perfectly legal to use any type of trail camera during hunting flavor in Pennsylvania.

When it comes to using the new cameras and related devices with communication capabilities, nevertheless, there is a stipulation.

Intent.

"Am I using this as a scouting tool, or am I using it in pursuit of an animal?" Lau said.

Furthering his explanation, Lau said that in using cameras and devices "with the ability to text pictures to your telephone, it would be illegal to use while hunting in a location nigh the camera. You lot couldn't apply it to warning yourself deer are on the way."

"It also would exist illegal to become to an area in pursuit of an beast you know is at that place considering yous've merely been texted a photo. Both instances would be considered hunting through the utilize of an unapproved electronic device."

So y'all shouldn't exist hunting most a photographic camera, with the intent of having that camera alert y'all that deer or other game is coming.

And y'all shouldn't head out to hunt a spot because you merely got a picture of a big buck in the area.

That last past had me puzzled, so I asked Lau if there's an amount of time you should wait before going out to hunt later receiving such a photo.

That'south when he mentioned "intent."

"If a reasonable amount of time has passed where you'd expect the animal to have moved on, there shouldn't exist an outcome," he said. "To hunt the next day in a spot you got a photo yesterday would be fine. Disallowment other circumstances, it would probably be fine to hunt in the evening subsequently receiving a morning photo. If you're continuing to receive photos all the while, that would exist different.

"The biggest thing is the intent."

If your camera is merely a scouting tool that lets yous know what game is in your expanse, and when the animals adopt to move, you're fine.

But if y'all're using it to dictate where and when you hunt, then yous're in violation.

Source: https://lancasteronline.com/sports/outdoors/is-it-legal-to-use-trail-cameras-during-hunting-season/article_a0856ac6-8dce-11e6-879e-774ec28f04ee.html

Posted by: pearsoncoight.blogspot.com