Tattletale Poll

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?

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.

For those of you who are judging, you better look in the mirror......people make mistakes that are unintended......

I got off the last lease before I had to. It was only a matter of time. And the "mistake" would have probably been intentional. Add to that the potential for a hunting accident to occur in that brood, of which I might have been the unintended victim, made for not such an enjoyable experience.

No reason to be shocked at all. We have had numerous threads of people who firmly believe in SSS when breaking game laws suits them or they don't think the law should exist. Lots of people have of ethics of convenience.




I think the show it definitely staged, at least partially. The GWs seem to go out of their way not to give people tickets, but that does not seem to be the typical MO is real life.

You are very fortunate to have good straight up friends like that

I wouldn't attempt, or at least with my limited aiming skills, attempt to shoot a deer on the run, especially a buck.
Risk of an unethical shot/gut shot/ wounding it and possibly not recovering it.

I think the show it definitely staged, at least partially. The GWs seem to go out of their way not to give people tickets, but that does not seem to be the typical MO is real life.
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I agree with this.

You guys are ignoring a key detail, that an illegal buck was taken, which I can't see happening in order to stage an event. I also can't see the citizens who appeared in the episode being such good actors.

I do believe there are times when the officers in the show gave people a break when they wouldn't have if the cameras weren't running. I've also seen cases where one or two officers were more courteous to larger men and less courteous to less threatening individuals.

Sad to learn that Benny had retired. He was one of my favorites.

I was not there, but several years ago on a ranch I hunted in OK, several employees were enjoying a few cocktails after work and the group saw a nice buck on a hill across the road - after official hunting hours. One employee grabbed his rifle and shot the deer. He immediately drove across the road (still on same ranch), loaded the deer and headed to his house. One of the other employees had a grudge against the first guy, so called warden immediately. They caught him before he arrived home confiscating the deer and his gun, citing him for the illegal kill, and took him to jail for DUI. Oh, and he lost his job. Mistakes can happen, but intentional disregard of the law is unacceptable in my book.

I voted yes because I’m such a Karen.....

The hunter who killed the buck and didn't bother to do his 'homework' before pulling the trigger should have been the one to call the game warden himself!

Would I have called? Probably so if the guy hadn't stepped up to the plate himself and owned his mistake!

These restrictions have been put in place for good reason and overall they are working to better the deer herd and hunting.


I've read through this thread and see some responses I would like to address here. I've found that when you are honest with the GWs they are pretty damn lenient in most cases provided a major violation hasn't taken place. You try and lie to them, you are going to get written for all violations you commit. A good friend of mine is a retired captain and I can tell you that many years ago I rode with him several times when he was at the coast. We'd sit and watch a pier full of people fishing for 20 minutes to an hour from a long way off and he'd make notes. We'd then drive down to the pier and walk out and he'd start checking them. If they lied to him and said they weren't fishing and they had been, it was an automatic citation. If they were honest, he'd take down their information and tell them they needed to purchase their license by the end of the day or he'd mail them a ticket. Even when he caught an honest person without a license with an undersized fish he would typically only write a warning provided that fish was close to the legal size or they didn't have multiple undersized fish.

I've found most, the overwhelming majority of wardens I know personally do a fantastic job and are more than fair. There are always a few in every bunch that are not and I can say I've only dealt with one personally who was an arrogant azz!

As far as this show goes, I believe everything you are seeing is real and there are no 'staged scenes' or actors involved that I'm aware of.

If the person was making the same mistake every year then I probably would not be hunting with them. As for shooting a narrow deer, just for the sake of argument lets say it is 12-15/16" wide and is a really heavy beamed 12 point that is over 16" tall. I have let the said buck walk for 3 years because none of us think it will clear the 13" rule. This is the reason I hate the 13" rule, we have mature bucks that will NEVER get wide enough to take.

Didn't ignore it. There may have been an illegal buck taken, but that doesn't mean the situation conjured up is real.

The key detail you may be ignoring is that it is a TV show where not everything is real.

Absolutely no doubt the 13" rule does let some bucks walk that need to be taken, but overall the rule does much more good than harm.

I saw one episode of LS Law where they were called by a hunter who'd just harvested a buck that didn't make the rule.
The GW came and check the deer out. They wrote that hunter a warning for it and I believe it was because the deer was obviously an older buck and not a young one because it was probably a good 1" or so short from being legal. In other words, most GWs know the difference in a young buck and a mature and I doubt would write a citation for a deer that is 12 15/16" wide no more than they'd write you one for a 14 7/8" trout.

Agreed. I would like to believe most if not all TPWD officers would keep the end goal of antler restrictions in mind when making such decisions.

I'm sure the $350 fine the hunter was given was real.

I voted maybe. I’m not going to let someone pull me into something I want no part of though.

Here is my take.

If you are the kind of guy that tells/calls game warden on another person that the a mistake like shooting a buck that does not make width or whatever to make it legal.

You dang sure better call the police on youself and insist they write you a ticket everytime you run a stop sign by accident, drives over the speed limit etc. or worse that that. Turn himself in for indecent exposure for peeing on the side of the road.

I agree with this. [/quote]

I concur.

There was one episode that didn't show every thing that happened. I know the people that was involved ,and I no longer watch it.

I don't know if I would have called the GW, but you can bet I would have kicked him off the lease immediately. No reason for him to kill a buck that young regardless of spread.

A few years ago I had one of my lease members call me on a Friday evening saying his son shot a buck and doesn't look like it is legal in our AR county and wanted me to call and report it to the game warden. I told him to take a breath, remeasure and call me back if that is really what he wanted me to do. He called back and said to call the game warden because he wanted his son to know what the right thing to do was. So I called him, told him the situation, and met him on the county road going to the lease. I told him that I think my lease member is more worried about me kicking him off the lease than paying a fine. The game warden asked me if I was and told him no- the member lives in Houston and could have very easily just quartered him, throw it in a cooler, and go home and I would have never known. You don't punish a member for a mistake and owning up to it. Needless to say the game warden used this as a teaching moment for that young man and showed him how to fill his license out and how to tag it properly, as his 13" buck. This left everyone with a good feeling about our game warden.

That is a great story and how I believe it ought to work from all persons actions. I'd add that I bet it left everyone with a good feeling about their own integrity.

If it was my friend, and an honest mistake, I'd simply discuss the situation with him and let him make the decision on how and if he needed to make it right. Game Warden's not in my job description. In the end stuff like this seems to work it's self out some how.

I wouldn’t call the game warden on one of my friends if he shot it at night with a 22. If your friends would call the law on you over something like a 12” buck, you need to get some new friends.

I hope that dad reports himself to the sheriff every time he speeds or doesn't use a blinker. That is, if he really wants to show his kid what the right thing to do is.
I would not report a friend and I damn well would not report my child for a simple mistake. But they would know of my disappointment in the situation enough that they would never do it again.

I usually read the entire thread before i reply but just no time. My pat answer for most everything is "it depends". Just too many variables. I dont know the episode but i didnt think the poll limited the answer in anyway to the specific situation. How good a friend? How bad an offense? Actually the poll said fellow hunter and not friend, I think. Anyway, dont really care, except i dont like game laws being broken.

I wouldn’t call the game warden on one of my friends if he shot it at night with a 22.

Man I am amazed by some of the responses here from "fellow hunters" - I guess I am too old and still believe in doing the right thing in all circumstances - I grew up to own up to my mistakes even if it meant I had to pay a fine, etc. There is a huge difference in an honest mistake and a reckless action -

No. Say it ain’t so! Surely not here? Lol

Most answers here are spur of the moment answers based on the emotions of the moment. Or based on their hurt feelings if they didn’t like your opinion on any particular subject. It’s not double standards, it’s no standards.

It is funny and entertaining though.

100% no on calling the game warden.

Hypotheticals are an easy answer, in real life it isn't so easy.

truth

Well, I'll say this thread really has me thinking, wrestling with, and making sure I take very good care to fulfil my role as a hunter and citizen to follow our social contracts and covenants, be they through laws, regulations, and just notions of good behavior, and to make sure I teach and model those to my kids or anyone whose watching me, inside or outside of the hunting community.

I've sure been guilty, like many, of seeing some things as subjective, as based on opinions of situations, versus just simply clear cut. And I hope that I'd be the kind of person that would respond well to someone saying to me, hey you gotta quit doing this, whether done by mistake or on purpose, its not okay just because you are a good ol' boy, And then if I didn't, I'd expect them, as a citizen and ethical hunter to report me. I hope integrity; personal, relational, and that as a citizen, is more important to my friends than some illusion of good feeling between us. If that exposes me and my behavior, then so be it, as I am responsible for that whether I like it or not, anxietizing as it may be.

Bingo

I have got off of lease's because of members unethical actions, not wanting to get caught up in any illegal happenings, a couple were early on on the lease, lost substantial amount of money. I HAVE called the G.W. when I have seen illegal fish taken, was never any friends because my friends would not do that.

I have been very fortunate with the friends I've had over the years, but I should probably clarify my post. I was talking about friends that would call the GW on a friend for a mistake like that. I've definitely had friends who could make a mistake like that.