Road Hunting - What can we do about it.

[The Gamemaster]

It was suggested to me that I start a post on road hunting and what we can do about it.

The laws in Pennsylvania does not allow road hunting, but it seem's to go on everywhere.

Some people think that even with a disabled hunter in the vehicle that they can road hunt and not get into trouble.

It has gotten to the point - where I live that no one wants to get out of the vehicle to shoot a deer and no one wants to walk more than 200 yards to hunt anymore.

Since I was brought up in a family that only hunted in the deep woods and had a camp that was so far off the main road that we were never brought up to hunt deer from a vehicle and were never allowed to road hunt.  Dad didn't believe in wasting gasoline when all you had to do to get a deer was go out in the woods a couple of hundred yards and sit for a while.

I have tried calling the local game wardens and all that does is put you in the middle of it, since the game warden didn't actually SEE someone road hunt or shoot out the window or not tag a deer.  It is your word against someone else's.

The problem is - when you live in a small town and know everyone and everyone knows you.  How do you call the game warden on people and then live in that town?

Your phone number is in the book, they know where you live, they can come visit you anytime - day or night.  It isn't like the State Police is going to run to your home if a home intruder comes to your house and starts doing damage to your property or threatening you.

Why stick your neck out only to have some lawyer get him off on a technicality or even worse just write them a small fine and let them go.  People never seem to learn by other peoples mistakes.

Instead they turn it around and make you out to be the bad guy, because until you called the game warden on them - they thought that they got away with something.  Maybe their dads brought them up that way and they did it that way for years and the only reason why they got caught was because you happened to be driving down the road and saw them do it.

My other point being that our camp was situated in a place that has a road going through it and the local road hunters has decimated the herd to the point of where there is nothing there anymore and I was forced to hunt someplace else.

So if the road hunters and poachers would have stayed away from my hunting spot, I wouldn't have had to leave it and I wouldn't have seen them doing something wrong.

By saying this, I am lumping all the road hunters into one very small group.

I feel that this problem is wide spread and will not go away until something is done about it.

Yesterday while inspecting the property that I hunt on, I noticed that the lock on our gate is gone - which is the 7th time that it has been taken off our gate and I also noticed 4 hunting vehicles parked next to the gate and one vehicle was from Ridgeway.

My question would be - what is someone doing coming from 50 miles away to hunt where I hunt when the hunting was once very good in Ridgeway - even better than where I hunt.
I know that there is nothing there legal - except one lone doe.  Living in a 4 point zone - anything less than a 4 point on one side is illegal.  Are they bringing kids in and then shooting illegal deer and then making the kids tag them to make them legal?  I don't know.  What I do know is that there is nothing else there.

What can we do as hunters to solve the problem of road hunting and illegal hunting?

[davem270win]

Gamemaster, it would help if you gave us some idea what part of PA you're from.

I hunt the eastern 1/2 of PA, including Tioga, Centre, Pike, and Carbon counties, and I don't see or hear much about road hunting. Not that it doesn't go on, but I don't think it's the plague you describe. I hear more about out-of-season poaching than I do about road hunting. I also hear about baiting.

A couple of years ago, we muzzleloader hunted Black Moshannon, and one of the guys shot a doe. As we were loading it up, a park ranger stopped by and asked where we shot in. My buddy pulled out his GPS and said "about a half-mile back that way". The ranger smiled and said "almost no one hunts more than 200 yards from the road". So one possible solution is to find an area they can't drive to.

Not much you can do in your situation - especially if the GCO's aren't interested. There are some parts of the state where the culture hasn't yet changed, and may not change for a long time.

[The Gamemaster]

Jefferson, Forest, Indiana, Elk and sometimes Clearfield County.

2D, 2F,

The worst part is that the road hunters that lived north of us are now coming south to get a deer because they put such a hurt on their own deer population up north.

If you read my other posts, you will see that I do not road hunt and I do not hunt next to the road on a regular basis.

Most of my hunting is done a mile or more away from the back roads.  It is just that it has gotten so hard to find deer now that I have to travel more to see less.  The more you travel, the more you see things that goes on in the woods.

My neighbors has 6 kids and they have 5 deep freezers in their basement.  They hunt from the first day of archery to the last day of muzzle-loader season - yet they never get anything.  YA RIGHT!

I caught them in a lie this year, because they were gutting one out beside the road - across from a section that is posted No DOE, No Bow, Hunting or Driving.  They had a doe!  it wasn't gutted out.
If you shot it in the woods, you would have gutted it out and tagged it before you dragged it to your vehicle.

It's illegal to move a deer before taging in Pennsylvania, but I do not have a cell phone and by the time you drive home and call a game warden and wait 3 hours for him to come.  They would have ample time to get rid of the deer or tag it!

I'm getting kind of mad at people that do not tag them also.

I think that everyone should have to turn in a report card, if they get a deer or not!

Make it a $1000 fine - if you don't send in your report cards.

Then if someone illegally harvested a deer and they came and looked in that persons freezer and saw fresh deer meat, they could write them a big old fine.  Once you make people pay - they will stop.

My other beef is the fact that a person that road hunts , doesn't actually want to hunt for deer.  All they really want to do is fill the freezer.  There is nothing there to make them tag a deer , send in their report card, or stay out of the woods once they got their deer.

Too many tags and too many seasons!