Hunter Harassment

[5.9cummins]

    I am just getting into waterfowl hunting with a buddy. He is fairly good at it but i got a long way to go. Anyway he had been bugging me to come up to his place for early goose. So this past weekend i managed to get up there for the last day. In the AM we didn't have a ton of action, only called in five birds - three of which didn't leave.

  For the PM we decided to try a different spot up on a ridge where we saw a ton of birds going down. So he starts telling me about a Alfalfa field that he loves to hunt but the neighbor has given him crap about hunting it in the past. It got cut that morning and we decided to try it out. Before setting up we stopped and talked with another neighbor who knows the property (its split by three land owners) and he tells us exactly where the property line is in the field.

  We set up in a drainage ditch that runs through the field and used the fresh cut alfalfa that was missed for cover. First flock of birds that shows dumps right into the decoys and we dropped four birds.

    About five minutes later we here "hello" long pause "HELLO - you can come out now", "YOU HAVE TO COME OUT". I flip open my blind and my buddy does the same and we pop up and look down the field and here comes this guy and his wife. My buddy and i just look at each other with a blank stare and shake our heads. We unload our guns as the guy approaches and he proceeds to tell us we are trespassing.

    My buddy is about to blow his top but manged to keep his cool and informs the guy that we are on another landowners property with permission. We then ask him if we had the correct definitions of the property boundary and if we were wrong we would move (we were well within the property we had permission to hunt). He responds with "well no one is out here with a transect but that is a rough approximation". The whole time I'm thinking its a transit not transect you idiot.

    So after he confirms we are on another persons property, not his and that we had permission to be there i inform him that NY has a hunter harassment law and proceed to pull a copy from my pack. Then we tell him that we are trying to hunt legally and that he is disturbing our hunt. He looks at the decoy spread and says "I'm not disturbing your geese". I should have replied with a smart @$$ remark like "because there plastic". At this point he gets a worried look on his face and leaves but before leaving tells us he will follow up on whether we have permission or not.

    Luckily there were no birds flying at the moment otherwise my buddy would have lost it. He leaves we get up and adjust the spread and stretch our legs to cool off a little and then get set to see if any more birds are flying. Shortly after settling back into our blinds we worked a double in and as we pull down on them i touch the trigger and "CLICK". I pump the action and "Click". Meanwhile my buddy is doing the same with his. We forgot to reload after our little chat. Did manage to bring them back around and drop one but the second wouldn't come in low enough.

Am i out of line? Its not rocket science figuring out the boundary lines - the ditch doesn't even touch his property.

   

[JGaruti3]

I do not think you are out of line one bit and I think you took the proper precautions to make sure you were not out of line.  So good for you!  Next time the guy comes out tell him to suck on your barrel!  hehe

[jr.deerslayer]

One year ago our hunting group split up, two went to the river while the rest of us (3) went about a hundred yards away to hunt a corn field. Both of the parties were killing geeese untill we were informed by the farmer that a sheriff was on his way. We didint care because we were totally legal. The sheriff marched over to the father who was about 75 and in very poor health and son and screames for them to put their guns down and hands behind their backs. the three of us totally bewildered ran over to see what the problem was. upon arrival we were informed that the two hunters were shooting at a house and the pellets were hitting a man outside. Any  one whose hunted waterfowl knows what it feels like to be hit by pellets. Basically like rain. the two were brought to jail even after we explained to the sheriff the house was 378 yards away(Buddy had a rangefinder) the sheriff then told us they were shooting at him when he was talking to the man who had the problems house, even though you could only see the back side of his house. After we had loaded our buddies boat we were greated by 2 encon officers and a state trooper. Like always we were totally legal. They agreed with us and one even ranged the House to find how far it really was. after the 2 were treated like legit criminals they were released w/o their guns.The scumbag sheriff never even had them unload their guns before he hauled them away, how did he know their would be no children around? Actually he forgot to take the guns at all, he had to come back ten minutes later to retrive them.talk about harrassment

[papabear]

I was hunting last year with a few guys who hit a house that was about 300 yards away they were shooting black cloud 3 in BB's the DEC officer even had a few pellets in his hand as evades no one was arrested but the one guy shooting the black clouds was given a written waring

[jr.deerslayer]

A warning is understandable, any further action in out of the line.

[bpb]

  300 yards is not enough distance for large shot.

A typical trap/skeet field has,(SHOULD have); a fallout safety distance of 300 yards.

Larger shot will travel farther.

You should not shoot in the direction of a structure unless it is beyond the 500yd mark.

[growalot]

You really didn't say getting pelted with bb's from a shot gun was like getting hit by rain ..right?....OMG I love hunt and ppl like you could turn me anti...and You did say you saw you were shooting in the general direction of a house...I mean you ranged it..the back of the house...where most ppl congregate...and you called the sheriff a scumbag? 

[jr.deerslayer]

the pellets feeling like rain, was a direct quote from the dec officer who was often hit while patroling lake champlain. the house was in back of an old railroad tressel which is blocked by a large hedgerow. please turn anti-, more room for me

[Doewhacker]

the pellets feeling like rain, was a direct quote from the dec officer who was often hit while patroling lake champlain. the house was in back of an old railroad tressel which is blocked by a large hedgerow. please turn anti-, more room for me

If its ok to shoot pellets from a far would you mind if I shot at your house from 300 yards? Put yourself in the home owners shoes for one second, all the guys had to do was not shoot in that one direction and every thing would have been fine.

If it were me and pellets were hitting my house you had better be ready for returned fire.

At 75 years old the one guy should have known better.

[growalot]

Whitty come back JR...but more room where?...I hunt my own property...and my dear you really wouldn't want me as an anti...I assure you...see I'm really not into playing games and I don't  bet unless it's a sure thing  and those are few and far between.... but I'd bet you.... there would be much more strict hunting laws on the books...and that's a fact...

[jr.deerslayer]

What you guys are suggesting are all good points, but what your forgetting is they were shooting 2 3/4 steel not lead, as you know steel loses energy faster thats why there coming out with the Hevi-shot and others. i was not the one shooting. Do you belive its right for a man whos 75 and dieing of cancer and can hardly move, be handcuffed hands behind back and thrown in the back of a cops car? I assure you that I would not want my house to be hit with pellets, but i belive for two men to be handcuffed and arrested is a bit much. By the way the dec officer belived we were ranging the hedge row which was blocking the home, the actually home was closer to 450 yards away. i still doubt however they were hitting the home,  being they were shooting at landing geese, not skybusting and the man that reported them was in an low income apartment with many other people and it seemed to bother no one but him. You better be close to pointing straight up if you want the pellets to travel anywhere near that huge distance.

[iDABhunt]

I and 2 others were harrassed many years ago while waterfowling on the Hudson. We actually had a person shoot off bottle rockets (fireworks) at us and towards any approaching birds. We left that day and had not given it much thought other than to be upset for what had happened. Two weeks later a similar situation occurred but without fireworks, the local police were called as was the local ENCON Officer. The police arrived much sooner than the ECO and were making us cease any hunting until the ECO arrived. After about 25 minutes the ECO arrived an looked over the area we were hunting and informed the Police Officers that we were well within legal regulations and also advised them of the Hunter Harrasment laws that are enforced in NYS. The unfortunate part of this story is, although we were in no violation it occurred to us that more than likely we would continue to have an issue in that particular spot and decided to go elsewhere so that we did not create an even bigger issue than what had already been done. We felt it was a better idea to take one on the chin for hunting than to possibly create a larger problem for everyone involved

(no fuel for the anti- fire). In retrospect it worked out to our advantage, we found an even better spot. Good Luck and good hunting to all.

[WNYBuckHunter]

and my dear you really wouldn't want me as an anti...I assure you...see I'm really not into playing games and I don't  bet unless it's a sure thing  and those are few and far between.... but I'd bet you.... there would be much more strict hunting laws on the books...and that's a fact...

You sure do have a pretty high opinion of yourself sometimes.  :

[growalot]

Actually ...I do...thanks for taking notice ;D

[ADKSasquatch]

When I was growing up in SW PA, we had a season when the antis decided to save the deer on opening day.  They walked through the woods banging on pots and chanting.  Well, I heard them coming, and I guess the nice 6 point I shot did too because he came running from their direction full bore.  Anyway, winds up, they all get charged with conducting a drive in excess of 25 people, and conducting a drive without a license.  Those fines actually added up to more than harrassing a hunter.  ;D

[papabear]

ADKSasquatch

    got a sasquatch last season here's a picture  of  it

[biggamefish]

Check the regs when waterfowl hunting you can shoot within 500 feet of a dwelling you just can't shoot in the direction of the dwelling.

  Also to get the maximum distance out of a shot I think it is somewhere around a 45 degree angle not strait up. Just some info for ya. 

[jr.deerslayer]

Check the regs when waterfowl hunting you can shoot within 500 feet of a dwelling you just can't shoot in the direction of the dwelling.

  Also to get the maximum distance out of a shot I think it is somewhere around a 45 degree angle not strait up. Just some info for ya. 

I believe that only applies when your hunting on the water, on land i think its still 500ft