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My understanding of "spotlighting" (I am not a hunter) is using a bright light source to mesmerize deer to make them easier to kill. That seems fundamentally d

My understanding of "spotlighting" (I am not a hunter) is using a bright light source to mesmerize deer to make them easier to kill. That seems fundamentally different to me than using a drone to recover a deer's body (that had previously been shot). Does that matter? Maybe it's the case that it's impossible to enforce a working difference between "using a drone light to mesmerize a deer pre-kill" vs "using a drone light to locate a deer's body", but in that case it seems like the law should just be against drones in hunting seasons/areas, rather than "spotlighting". But as far as I can tell no such law was on the books (and the judge also wanted clearer laws).

alistairSH 3y ago
That's the crux of it. In this case, we can ignore the drone aspect - spotlighting is illegal on its own - and there's no question he used a spotlight. It just happened to be mounted to a drone. And spotlighting is illegal for good reason. Deer hunting (and most game hunting) is supposed to be "sporting" - there should be some challenge - tracking, hit the target, etc. Spotlighting takes away that sporting aspect - it causes the deer to freeze, making it easy to kill. And if "spotlights for recovery" is legal, then "spotlights for hunting" becomes nearly impossible to enforce as a hunter would always claim "the deer was dead, I was just recovering it".