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> Under the “recreational spotlighting” section of Title 34, the Pennsylvania Game and Wildlife Code explicitly prohibits the use of a spotlight “to search for

> Under the “recreational spotlighting” section of Title 34, the Pennsylvania Game and Wildlife Code explicitly prohibits the use of a spotlight “to search for or locate for any purpose any game or wildlife anywhere within this Commonwealth at any time during the antlered deer rifle season and during the antlerless deer rifle season.” It is not immediately clear if this applies to dead or wounded game, since Title 34 does not explicitly address the use of lights or flashlights for recovering game. Another section prohibits hunters from using artificial lights of any kind while carrying a firearm or other weapon, but there is no mention anywhere in the game code of prohibitions against recovering or tracking downed game at night. I know nothing about hunting, or the laws surrounding it, but why would it be illegal to recover a dead animal at night using a spotlight?

empathy_m 3y ago
It sounds like there's a distinction between looking for a corpse with a flashlight and looking for new things to kill with the flashlight, and that the latter is sometimes prohibited (some discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlighting ). Also seems like it would be tough to do the former without accidentally doing the latter.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  Reaction: "That's your story, eh? Okay - if you can describe and find that corpse, then I won't arrest you."
- krisoft 3y ago
  > Also seems like it would be tough to do the former without accidentally doing the latter. Like put away your gun? I have walked in forests with a flashlight without killing anything many many times. The trick is to not bring a gun to the experience.
  - peterleiser 3y ago
    The defense attorney said: “Both the arresting officer and the undercover officer — both a game warden for over 30 years each — testified that it is illegal to recover downed game at night without a weapon”
    - Johnny555 3y ago
      But also, they couldn't point to a law prohibiting it: He says that during the trial, neither game warden could recall ever citing a hunter for trying to recover downed game at night — nor could they point to a single section of the state’s game code that supported their position. That code was amended in 2018 to allow the use of tracking dogs when recovering deer and other big game.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    If you are recovering down game you should have a gun on you. Sometimes you discover the animal is not dead, just in pain and will die many hours in the future. The ethical thing is to deliver a clean kill - which requires a weapon. Shooting a gun at close range under light is not dangerous. Most uses of a gun at night are stupid and recklessly dangerous, but this is one of the exceptions where it is safe. Note that the above is at odds with telling if someone is illegally hunting at night. Which is why it is often prohibited.
    - BytesAndGears 3y ago
      > The ethical thing is to deliver a clean kill - which requires a weapon. Isn’t a knife also well suited to this purpose? Assuming the animal is on the ground and not able to move well. Though I guess it depends how injured they are
      - bluGill 3y ago
        No. An animal is unpredictable and can still kick.
        krisoft 3y ago
        One could argue that the fact that the animal which you are trying to kill has a chance of hurting you back makes that the only sporting option.
solardev 3y ago
It probably upsets the night vision goggle lobby /s
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
CoopaTroopa 3y ago
Most likely to get rid of the confusion between a hunter recovering a dead animal at night and poachers using a spotlight to illegally hunt
superkuh 3y ago
Because it would be infeasible to determine if the hunter that has a firearm found and shot the deer using the light. When using lights at night the animals are temporarily blinded and stand still, making it easier for hunters to kill them. This is generally not legal. The situation is much less clear in the case of a hunter that does not have a firearm at hand like this case.
- wizerdrobe 3y ago
  Note that spotlighting is typically an issue around deer hunting. For the American Alligator night hunting is the norm with lights being legal (to spot for eye reflection.) https://www.dnr.sc.gov/wildlife/alligator/pdf/alligatorhunting2022.pdf https://www.dnr.sc.gov/wildlife/alligator/pdf/alligatorhunti...
bonton89 3y ago
It is likely illegal simply because everyone you caught deer jacking with a spotlight would say they were just looking for a deer they previously wounded.
Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
> why would it be illegal to recover a dead animal at night using a spotlight? Because it would be used as a loophole to hunt at night with a spotlight. In the old south park episodes they used to do a bit where you could hunt anything you wanted as long as before you shot it you said "It's coming straight for us!" so you had a self-defense excuse. Loopholes will be used.
- daveslash 3y ago
  When I was a kid, my dad was driving us home along a rural road from cub scouts. We came across a neighbor who needed help loading a bear into his truck. He claims that he hit it in the road and injured it so badly he had to put it down. It was outside of bear season. We always suspected that he shot it first, then dragged it in front of his truck to hit it. We'll never know. I dive for lobsters. You need to measure them before you put them in your bag. You can't put them in your bag and measure them later and release the small ones. The reason is if you could bag first and measure later, people would use this as a loophole when confronted by wardens with undersized lobsters. Similar regulations with fish and open alcohol containers while driving.
  - linuxftw 3y ago
    Where I live, it's lawful to collect your own road kill (as in this scenario), you're supposed to call law enforcement first. Back in the day, nobody had a cell phone, so it might have been okay.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      In PA you have 24 hours to notify about road kill.
  - bhickey 3y ago
    Do they tail notch berried females where you live?
    - daveslash 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kristjansson 3y ago
If you don't know: deer freeze if you shine a bright light at them. Hunting with a spotlight at night is unsporting, so there are laws against using a light at night at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlighting
crdrost 3y ago
So this is what the article is talking about, that it's not clear about the difference between killing vs recovering, they are both lumped together as hunting. The reasons that you don't want people to use spotlights for killing the animal are not too hard to come up with. (Actually kids on college campuses do this for zombies-vs-humans, smart zombies will blind humans at night with spotlights to make it hard for them to fire their nerf guns back at the zombies.) It is considered unsporting/unethical for a couple reasons: first because the animals like to feed nocturnally so it's easier to find them near people's fields, so there's no “tracking it through the forest” step; second the animals will often freeze and stare into the light, making them easier to target; third you can't see behind the animal to ensure that the shot is safe if you miss; for all you know you might be aimed at a neighbor's house in the distance after they've turned out their lights; fourth, getting a spotlight in your windows is a mild nuisance while folks are wandering around near your property; fifth because nighttime hunting is in general discouraged or illegal because that's when the poachers would be out and when you can't see other humans very well.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  On the other hand, recovering an animal with a light is a good thing, because otherwise you might lose an injured animal that will slowly die over hours, days, or weeks
  - omginternets 3y ago
    The impact of spotlights on nocturnal life are also significant.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      If everybody is following the rules in good faith, it should be pretty rare, right? You only have to track down an injured animal in the dark if you shot it in the light and then it became dark before you got to it. Hunting ends almost everywhere around or a little after sun down.
rapind 3y ago
I'd wager that spotlight's stress out crepuscular animals, even if you aren't about to shoot them. I'm sure the many other things humans do stress out animals even more though, so I'm not offering an opinion on this case, just what I think the justification (if any) might be.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Animals get used to things though. You see deer on trails all the time when you ride a noisy ATV on ATV trails through the woods, but walk the same trails and you never will. Deer gets used to ATVs and don't run. Deer generally are not used to humans on foot and will stay away.
  - ben7799 3y ago
    Same with mountain bikes. Ride up to the deer on a bike and it's not scared. Get off to take a picture and it bolts.
fooqux 3y ago
> Another section prohibits hunters from using artificial lights of any kind while carrying a firearm or other weapon Well, that's idiotic. I understand that it's probably easier to ban lights all of the time since it would be difficult to prove either way that they weren't used to actively hunt. But, at least for deer hunting, a hunter needs to be at their spot well before it gets light out. So you're going to make them walk through the forest at night with no source of light? Likewise, you're walking back at night.
- giantg2 3y ago
  The PGC hunter education courses specifically teach you to use lights on your walk in and out as a safety measure against any idiot that might be out there poaching (shooting at sound before light). A classic example of an agency playing God with their "interpretation" (advocating breaking) the law.
giantg2 3y ago
"I know nothing about hunting, or the laws surrounding it, but why would it be illegal to recover a dead animal at night using a spotlight?" If you live in PA you'll know that the game commission and game laws are pretty messed up in many cases, specifically anything that has to do with technology. A lot of the technology has been essentially "reviewed" by the PGC to see if it's lawful or not, even when I clearly isn't. They have trouble getting timely legislative updates. PA was probably one of the last states to allow laser range finders because they "project a beam", even though the beam was not visible and that technology would provide a better chance of making an ethical shot.
sokoloff 3y ago
> explicitly prohibits the use of a spotlight to search for or locate for any purpose any game or wildlife anywhere within this Commonwealth > It is not immediately clear if this applies to dead or wounded game, since Title 34 does not explicitly address the use of lights or flashlights for recovering game How is that not immediately clear (at least for wounded game)? I think it's also pretty damn clear for freshly killed game. "locate for any purpose any game" doesn't seem to leave a lot of leeway for "yeah, but what about using a spotlight to locate this specific type of game for this specific purpose; surely that's OK, right?!" "No."
op00to 3y ago
The state believes recovery of a deer is part of “search for and locate”.

empathy_m 3y ago

It sounds like there's a distinction between looking for a corpse with a flashlight and looking for new things to kill with the flashlight, and that the latter is sometimes prohibited (some discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlighting ). Also seems like it would be tough to do the former without accidentally doing the latter.

bell-cot 3y ago
Reaction: "That's your story, eh? Okay - if you can describe and find that corpse, then I won't arrest you."
krisoft 3y ago
> Also seems like it would be tough to do the former without accidentally doing the latter. Like put away your gun? I have walked in forests with a flashlight without killing anything many many times. The trick is to not bring a gun to the experience.
- peterleiser 3y ago
  The defense attorney said: “Both the arresting officer and the undercover officer — both a game warden for over 30 years each — testified that it is illegal to recover downed game at night without a weapon”
  - Johnny555 3y ago
    But also, they couldn't point to a law prohibiting it: He says that during the trial, neither game warden could recall ever citing a hunter for trying to recover downed game at night — nor could they point to a single section of the state’s game code that supported their position. That code was amended in 2018 to allow the use of tracking dogs when recovering deer and other big game.
- bluGill 3y ago
  If you are recovering down game you should have a gun on you. Sometimes you discover the animal is not dead, just in pain and will die many hours in the future. The ethical thing is to deliver a clean kill - which requires a weapon. Shooting a gun at close range under light is not dangerous. Most uses of a gun at night are stupid and recklessly dangerous, but this is one of the exceptions where it is safe. Note that the above is at odds with telling if someone is illegally hunting at night. Which is why it is often prohibited.
  - BytesAndGears 3y ago
    > The ethical thing is to deliver a clean kill - which requires a weapon. Isn’t a knife also well suited to this purpose? Assuming the animal is on the ground and not able to move well. Though I guess it depends how injured they are
    - bluGill 3y ago
      No. An animal is unpredictable and can still kick.
      - krisoft 3y ago
        One could argue that the fact that the animal which you are trying to kill has a chance of hurting you back makes that the only sporting option.

solardev 3y ago

It probably upsets the night vision goggle lobby /s

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

CoopaTroopa 3y ago

Most likely to get rid of the confusion between a hunter recovering a dead animal at night and poachers using a spotlight to illegally hunt

superkuh 3y ago

Because it would be infeasible to determine if the hunter that has a firearm found and shot the deer using the light. When using lights at night the animals are temporarily blinded and stand still, making it easier for hunters to kill them. This is generally not legal. The situation is much less clear in the case of a hunter that does not have a firearm at hand like this case.

wizerdrobe 3y ago
Note that spotlighting is typically an issue around deer hunting. For the American Alligator night hunting is the norm with lights being legal (to spot for eye reflection.) https://www.dnr.sc.gov/wildlife/alligator/pdf/alligatorhunting2022.pdf https://www.dnr.sc.gov/wildlife/alligator/pdf/alligatorhunti...

bonton89 3y ago

It is likely illegal simply because everyone you caught deer jacking with a spotlight would say they were just looking for a deer they previously wounded.

Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago

> why would it be illegal to recover a dead animal at night using a spotlight? Because it would be used as a loophole to hunt at night with a spotlight. In the old south park episodes they used to do a bit where you could hunt anything you wanted as long as before you shot it you said "It's coming straight for us!" so you had a self-defense excuse. Loopholes will be used.

daveslash 3y ago
When I was a kid, my dad was driving us home along a rural road from cub scouts. We came across a neighbor who needed help loading a bear into his truck. He claims that he hit it in the road and injured it so badly he had to put it down. It was outside of bear season. We always suspected that he shot it first, then dragged it in front of his truck to hit it. We'll never know. I dive for lobsters. You need to measure them before you put them in your bag. You can't put them in your bag and measure them later and release the small ones. The reason is if you could bag first and measure later, people would use this as a loophole when confronted by wardens with undersized lobsters. Similar regulations with fish and open alcohol containers while driving.
- linuxftw 3y ago
  Where I live, it's lawful to collect your own road kill (as in this scenario), you're supposed to call law enforcement first. Back in the day, nobody had a cell phone, so it might have been okay.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    In PA you have 24 hours to notify about road kill.
- bhickey 3y ago
  Do they tail notch berried females where you live?
  - daveslash 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

kristjansson 3y ago

If you don't know: deer freeze if you shine a bright light at them. Hunting with a spotlight at night is unsporting, so there are laws against using a light at night at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlighting

crdrost 3y ago

So this is what the article is talking about, that it's not clear about the difference between killing vs recovering, they are both lumped together as hunting. The reasons that you don't want people to use spotlights for killing the animal are not too hard to come up with. (Actually kids on college campuses do this for zombies-vs-humans, smart zombies will blind humans at night with spotlights to make it hard for them to fire their nerf guns back at the zombies.) It is considered unsporting/unethical for a couple reasons: first because the animals like to feed nocturnally so it's easier to find them near people's fields, so there's no “tracking it through the forest” step; second the animals will often freeze and stare into the light, making them easier to target; third you can't see behind the animal to ensure that the shot is safe if you miss; for all you know you might be aimed at a neighbor's house in the distance after they've turned out their lights; fourth, getting a spotlight in your windows is a mild nuisance while folks are wandering around near your property; fifth because nighttime hunting is in general discouraged or illegal because that's when the poachers would be out and when you can't see other humans very well.

idiotsecant 3y ago
On the other hand, recovering an animal with a light is a good thing, because otherwise you might lose an injured animal that will slowly die over hours, days, or weeks
- omginternets 3y ago
  The impact of spotlights on nocturnal life are also significant.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    If everybody is following the rules in good faith, it should be pretty rare, right? You only have to track down an injured animal in the dark if you shot it in the light and then it became dark before you got to it. Hunting ends almost everywhere around or a little after sun down.

rapind 3y ago

I'd wager that spotlight's stress out crepuscular animals, even if you aren't about to shoot them. I'm sure the many other things humans do stress out animals even more though, so I'm not offering an opinion on this case, just what I think the justification (if any) might be.

bluGill 3y ago
Animals get used to things though. You see deer on trails all the time when you ride a noisy ATV on ATV trails through the woods, but walk the same trails and you never will. Deer gets used to ATVs and don't run. Deer generally are not used to humans on foot and will stay away.
- ben7799 3y ago
  Same with mountain bikes. Ride up to the deer on a bike and it's not scared. Get off to take a picture and it bolts.

fooqux 3y ago

> Another section prohibits hunters from using artificial lights of any kind while carrying a firearm or other weapon Well, that's idiotic. I understand that it's probably easier to ban lights all of the time since it would be difficult to prove either way that they weren't used to actively hunt. But, at least for deer hunting, a hunter needs to be at their spot well before it gets light out. So you're going to make them walk through the forest at night with no source of light? Likewise, you're walking back at night.

giantg2 3y ago
The PGC hunter education courses specifically teach you to use lights on your walk in and out as a safety measure against any idiot that might be out there poaching (shooting at sound before light). A classic example of an agency playing God with their "interpretation" (advocating breaking) the law.

giantg2 3y ago

"I know nothing about hunting, or the laws surrounding it, but why would it be illegal to recover a dead animal at night using a spotlight?" If you live in PA you'll know that the game commission and game laws are pretty messed up in many cases, specifically anything that has to do with technology. A lot of the technology has been essentially "reviewed" by the PGC to see if it's lawful or not, even when I clearly isn't. They have trouble getting timely legislative updates. PA was probably one of the last states to allow laser range finders because they "project a beam", even though the beam was not visible and that technology would provide a better chance of making an ethical shot.

sokoloff 3y ago

> explicitly prohibits the use of a spotlight to search for or locate for any purpose any game or wildlife anywhere within this Commonwealth > It is not immediately clear if this applies to dead or wounded game, since Title 34 does not explicitly address the use of lights or flashlights for recovering game How is that not immediately clear (at least for wounded game)? I think it's also pretty damn clear for freshly killed game. "locate for any purpose any game" doesn't seem to leave a lot of leeway for "yeah, but what about using a spotlight to locate this specific type of game for this specific purpose; surely that's OK, right?!" "No."

op00to 3y ago

The state believes recovery of a deer is part of “search for and locate”.