Tonight's Lone Star Law episode included an incident where a deer hunter notified the local game warden after a fellow hunter had killed an illegal buck. It appeared the hunter shot the deer on the run without checking to make sure it satisfied antler restrictions. The hunter who called to report the incident claimed to be a friend of the other hunter and had been hunting with him for several years.

Can't say I remember a poll where the question involved reporting a fellow hunter for making a mistake so this could make for some interesting discussion.

Would you call a game warden on a fellow hunter after he/she had broken a law?

Tattletale Poll single choice
	Yes
	No
	Maybe
Votes accepted starting: 08/24/20 02:54 AM
View Results

Snitches get stiches.

It would depend on the law being broken

After you speaking poorly of the Texas Game Wardens enforcing the TP&W code on this show, I'm not surprised by this thread.

The faces of two hunters were not hid in tonight's episode, which makes you wonder if the two hunters made amends somehow after the taping of the show. Whatever the case, it turned out to be a $350 mistake for the hunter who killed the illegal buck.

I voted No, but I would expect that friend to call them on me if I took that shot as I am learning and it needs to be right when you get to camp.. I would pay the fine and learn from the experience and come out of it more informed and on the right side of the law. My friendships mean more than that but that is just me.

Could be wrong but I can see many deciding to let it slide on the first mistake but with a promise to report the next such incident. Who knows, maybe this wasn't the hunter's first screw up.

Not only would I not call the GW on my friend, as far as I know I've never had a friend that would do that.

To clarify my post I would not either so it really is a non issue

For an actual friend, I would have helped him clean the deer and that would have been the end of it. Everybody makes mistakes, except me . Doing it on purpose is different, even then I wouldn't call the GW unless I really didn't like that guy. But if I really didn't like him, he wouldn't be my friend to start with.

This is why I've had suspicion that a lot of these episodes are staged using actors, but are probably based on real cases.
And why wasn't the deer confiscated since they wrote the guy a ticket?
There is no excuse for shooting a buck running with a broadside view in a antler restriction county, and that deer wasn't even close!
If he was a seasoned hunter he should have had the book thrown at him.

We have Mike Boone here in Hardin County,uhhhh what else can I say,oh he does his job

My SIL and I were filmed in East Texas before the first season aired. We were cleaning my SIL's doe when they drove up in two trucks, the officers in one and two guys who were doing the filming in another. They recorded some footage, asked us both to sign a release (only if we wanted to appear on the show) and left without incident. The footage never aired with our thoughts being it was because there were no fouls committed.

Typically, I am black and white and not a maybe kind of a guy. I just can't break an answer down into black & white here.

If it was a friend or even someone I did not know who just made a mistake No! If it is people that intentionally do it yes!

Man these answers sure bring up some double standards that I’ve seen posted in this forum...

I believe most people are good people at heart and are largely law-abiding citizens (which one of us has never broken the law? ever exceeded the speed limit?) However, you get bad apples in every barrel. Not all people who hunt are good, law-abiding citizens. Some make a habit of breaking the law in the field. Those are the type of guys I would likely report to the warden.

I would not report friends, or other hunters who broke a law by mistake. if you keep good company then your friends are unlikely to be the type who break the law on purpose.

Lastly, not all laws that are broken are equally serious. All laws should be obeyed but some laws, even if you break them on purpose, do little harm to anyone/anything while others obviously do.

For example, it's getting late and a fellow hunter is returning to his vehicle. He decides to take a short cut through a neighbor's property. He does not have permission, he should not be doing it and if he is caught he should pay the fine/price. On the flip side, he hasn't really harmed anyone/anything and if he told me about that I would not report him to a warden even if I don't condone what he did.

If a fellow hunter made a mistake and shot a deer on someone else's property, then that's more serious in my opinion. If that hunter told me about that mistake I would encourage him to contact the landowner, inform him of the mistake and offer to compensate him for the deer shot on his property. That landowner may well respect the hunter's honesty and decide not to report him to the warden for making a mistake to which he owned up. If that same hunter tends to make such mistakes regularly then that would be a different matter.

I have a feeling it was staged.

The guy was honest, he made a mistake. He could have just buried the deer and kept his mouth shut and not one would have known the difference. Or he could have just left it and said he wounded a deer and could not find it He would have saved the fine money!!

His morals are better than his buddy.

The discussion brings to mind a quote that I heard many years ago that I found to be quite valid in the corporate world.

"A manager is someone who always does things right, while a leader is someone who always does the right thing."

A leader would try to find something a friend could use as a magazine plug for a dove hunt when he forgot to put his back in after the Spring turkey season. A manager would only hope a game warden shows up that day.

I am starting to wonder about this show being a bit staged too. I saw that and it just seems weird for a guy to call the GW on another guy in his own camp.

I've lived and worked with people long enough to believe otherwise. "Chicken chit" is the term that comes to mind.

WTF, just a $350 fine?

I’m shocked that so many here would allow such an infraction to go unreported.

But then again, I’m not.

I’ve always said that thousands of illegal & young bucks are shot each year & the shooter “hunter” is never held accountable.

That surprised me as well when the underage kids who were caught with beer were fined $269 each. None of them were driving at the time and several were reported to be 20 years old.

I'm thinking the judge could have tacked on restitution cost for the deer but opted not to after recognizing it was a legitimate mistake.