I used to hunt with a buddy that was taught that the total number of dove that you put on the ground constituted your bag limit. If you were unable to find three of them, they still counted toward the total.

He was from another state where I think it is the law.
Here, the law says "in possession".

However, there is an argument to be made with the logic that the limit is set to protect the resource and once you reach that limit you should stop shooting, regardless of how many you actually bagged.

Thoughts THF?

I’m fine with the current law. Not sure changing it would help the bird population much.

Just me okay, I go by how many hit the ground and stop. Not judging any one

I count what I knock down. I always hunt with a dog. That solves the problem of finding them.

If the feds are watching you hunt, you better count any downed bird not retrieved in your bag limit.

^^^ This and that...

Agreed!

We discussed this years ago on the forum. For trivia I emailed TPWD law enforcement on behalf of the forum with the hypothetical question and I posted the reply from them. The answer basically was, if you know you killed it, it counts against your limit.

I know it is still kinda grey in that it could get subjective in whether a shot was mortal or not and somewhat unenforceable, but more than one forum member did come out with stories like a gw either watching and finding or searching and finding a downed bird after a limit was taken and citing the hunter over the limit.

It was a very very long time ago, so I'm sure the thread was lost during one of the forum upgrades or repairs or I would dig it up for y'all.

Found it.
https://texashuntingforum.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/791097/

I think you could get yourself in trouble for wanton waste if you didn't do everything in your power to locate downed game.

You would get in even more trouble if GW shows up, finds your lost birds and it puts you over your limit. I’m surprised GW’s don’t take dogs with them, they would bust a lot of people if they did.

Dogs would not be cost effective. The training and housing of them would cost more than the revenue they would bring...in all likely scenarios.

Sadly, a lot of tickets today are for generating revenue.

If I was a GW, I would bring my own dog. I would get out of the boat and give her a “hunt it up” while I talked to the hunters and checking their license. My first question to the hunter would probably be “why are you sweating?”.

Then, you would need to prove which hunter shot the downed bird.

I don't know if there were any GW dogs involved, but in Kansas you better not mess around. There's a young buck that I hunt with, one of my son's friends, that knows a group that went up there a couple weeks ago for the teal opener. With 17 twenty-something year olds I'm sure there was plenty of jackassery going on. I know they basically hung out drinkin all afternoon then headed to the marsh at midnight.

Long story short, they got 17 limits. I don't know if they were feds or KS wardens, but they went in behind them and found 3 cripples. They wrote all 17 hunters tickets. I have a couple problems with that. First, it's a huge place. How could they ever prove that those birds came from them? Second, given you can prove #1, there were only 3 birds over. I could see the justification for 3 tickets, but not 17.

That was going to be my reply to reeltexan. In those situations, they write everyone a ticket, they do not need proof to write a ticket. Proof is needed in court, I'm not even sure about that. Hunting regs are vague for a reason.

I'm sure they could prevail in court if it is worth the time and effort.

One of the wardens in the county where I live has a lab. Wardens have dogs scattered around the state. K-9 units have to travel around the state when they are needed. This particular warden is a good man. His dog will find a person. Blood track. Find a bird. Find a spent cartridge or shot shell. Alert to drugs. It is pretty solid.

Along with what Guy said, it seems likely they know a bunch of out-of-staters aren't about to go back to KS to fight it. Cheaper to pay up.

That is assuming you have to be in court in person these days.

There are several lessons in that story…

Any time you want to fight a ticket, you got to lawyer up, and that is alway $$$$

Have you ever found someone else's bird after you limited?

Opening day of teal season I shot my 6 birds. I had another group 400 or so yards away. They ended up leaving early, I'm walking back to the truck and get to the area they were hunting. My dog is running the bank and working the brush line. Next thing I know she is bringing me a wounded teal. I ring its neck and throw it in the bag. The other group was already gone so I couldn't give it to them. Needless to say I had 7 birds in possession. If a GW stopped me I was going to tell him what happened. I guess if he believed me great, if not I assume he would be writing me a ticket. But he'll what was I suppose to do. I didn't shoot the bird and I wasn't just going to release a wounded bird that was going to likely die at some point.

majority of game wardens cant even identify birds, at the end of the day its all about fund raising and not conservation unfortunately. Every few years certain key words come up over and over, co-mingle was a big one. Biggest bunch of non-sense to ever exist.

Like Guy said, most of the time its cheaper to just pay the ticket than it is to fight it even of you are right and they are wrong.

From dealings with them, for forty years, a ticket would be yours.

Last year hunting the coastal marsh with my brother-in-law. We limited fairly quick. There was a couple guys hunting a different slough about a 1/2 mile away. We watched a group of pintail decoy on them. After they shot, the birds came our way. About 400 yards from us one of the pennies dropped. We watched a guy look for that bird for 20 minutes. Could also see he did not go far enough. When we were finished and had our dekes picked up, I lined my dog up and sent him. He picked it up and brought it back. Gorgeous Bull Sprig. We put the bird on the front of the boat away from our two lanyards and motored it over to them. They tried to wave us off. Once they figured out what we were doing they seemed to appreciate it.