Bear bait????

[Doc]

With many of the same feeding/baiting laws that have applied to deer also now applying to bears, I have to wonder exactly how far the interpretation of these laws could reach. I have heard of some rather extreme cases where COs and judges have pushed the wording on laws to include some rather bizzarre interpretations. One has to wonder just how vulnerable trappers are now with the wide variety of baits that they have always used. For that matter, anyone who drags a road-killed deer off into the woods for predator hunting or photography purposes ...... Are they guilty of placing a bear bait, or feeding the bears? The farmer totes a dead calf carcass over into the hedgerow ...... same question. Is he guilty of feeding bears or placing a bear bait?

Are there any details in the wording of the law or related laws that would preclude somebody from innocently and inadvertantly being charged with breaking this bear feeding law by some over-zealous CO?

[G-Man]

Indirect feeding(like a bird feeder) is only illegal if a warning is given. The bear population is getting crazy at least here in wny. I always enjoyed seeing them (it use to be once every other year or so) now i get at least 1 picture a week. This Fall after having (3)3-d targets eaten i tried a block only to have that eaten., add in 3 treestand seats,and a stool dragged off(which i still haven't found) I've had enough of bears and wonder why the dec is still trying to protect them more with this law. This fall i hope to try to control the population in my neck of the woods a little......

[Doc]

I think the new law forbidding bear feeding is not really something that is designed to protect or increase bear populations, but rather is intended to eliminate the semi-domestication of wild bears and the resulting safety problems and property damage activities of the bears.

However, my question was more aimed at just how tightly the new "feeding" law will be applied. In other words, is it possible that things that were formerly considered normal activities by farmers, hunters and photographers (as noted in the original post) might now all of a sudden put them on the wrong side of the law. There are so many things that can be considered bear food.

[G-Man]

Anything can be considered bear food...and if the photographer/trapper gets a warning from dec yes I can see how the person could end up on the wrong side of the law very easily. Although i'd like to think the warning would be if nusisance complaints were caused by the feeding. Unfortunatly there are the gung ho officers and judges out there who do not posses commonsence and would make it seem a fellony.

[Doc]

I have heard quite a few instances where the intent of laws has been stretched way out of shape by over-enthusiastic COs intent on applying them way beyond what they were ever intended to. The cases that I have heard of had no warnings involved. I just thought that this law may be tailor-made for over enforcement and use in situations where there clearly was no intent to actually break the law.

[G-Man]

The last i heard on this was a guy was feeding birds and a bear was coming into the bird feeders it eventually got curious about a freezer on the man's neighbors' back porch. dec was called and man told to stop feeding birds..he didn't and bear returned damaging the freezer and taking a frozen 20lbs turkey. neighbor called in a bear complaint and the man got a ticket.. haven't heard what the fine/punishment was, or what happend to bear.

[growalot]

The DEC made a video on living..how to...with bears in NY...the ECO's told us they don't usually relocate habituated bears any longer ...they just shoot them when these problems arise...which is why they are coming down on violators much harder...at least thats what the 3 DEC ppl told our group...They had to shoot one in our area...but found it's problem arose from having a severe injury to it's mouth...making it seek easy food at ppls houses

[Doc]

Our bear population in Ontario County is so small that it hardly makes any difference that we now have an open season. We had a bear wandering around here about 2 years ago, and nobody has seen him since. However those two nights that he raided the bird feeders (destroyed them actually), and then dragged my garbage cans up through the woods strewing trash for hundreds of yards, kind of convinced me that feeding these critters would be a big mistake. The muddy paw prints on my neighbor's porch door was a nice reminder that feeding these guys and removing some of their natural fear of man, probably is not a real good idea.

However, if the enforcement boys are going to interpret this new law as pertaining to the rotten meat in every trapper's dirt-hole set, or some dead animal that a farmer has dragged off into the lower forty, or some dead critter that a photographer placed in the woods for a couple of pictures, then I think it would be nice to know that before we are faced with a CO writing us up with a nice expensive ticket for some inadvertant offense that never occurred to us. That is the reason I brought the subject up. I just wanted to see if anyone had gotten any sense of how nit-picky the authorities might get over this new law.

[growalot]

I think I posted here earlier that I had a baiting verses legal attracting  question...I went to several DEC officers and got a different answer from all of them from different regions...one Sergent in reg. 9 was very helpful...but also suggested to contact the officers in the region I was going to be hunting in...interpretation of the law varies amongst them...?.....that is why I've stated there should be one centralized school all these guys go to to learn the laws and their intended purpose.

Problem is if your ticketed and the judge doesn't agree with the ECO interpretation of why you where ticketed ...NYS still has a surcharge for the ticket being issued and you having to go to court...Get names and #'s