Utah = 1,000+ Poaching Cases A Year

RobG said:

I must be missing something if you, Buzz and Randy are against it, but what is wrong with requiring probable cause before entering private property? Don't police have to obey that because of the fourth amendment?

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Not necessarily. It depends on the state and on the situation. In Montana, the state Supreme Court has extended curtilage to a much great degree, and there is no provision in the MCA that allows FWP wardens to enter private property in the course of their duties.

Edit: The 4th Amendment of the US Constitution does not prohibit game wardens from entering private property to check hunters and anglers. Many states allow the entry onto private property so long as the warden can articulate that they believed people were hunting or fishing. They do not always have to have probable cause that a violation occurred.

Zach, I wasn't implying that landowners are saints. Far from it. Here in Montana Landowners are busted every year for transferring tags and a lot of other violations. Some landowners are the worst of the worst.
Many landowners are just tired of dealing with violators. I hear "I can't wait for hunting season to be over" at least a dozen times a year. Some times I even find myself thinking it. It will be hard to make gains in the access problem if this continues. I would hope that cracking down harder on violators would be something that landowners and Sportsmen could agree on.

Antlerradar

RobG said:

I must be missing something if you, Buzz and Randy are against it, but what is wrong with requiring probable cause before entering private property? Don't police have to obey that because of the fourth amendment?

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This.

JLS said:

The 4th Amendment of the US Constitution does not prohibit game wardens from entering private property to check hunters and anglers. Many states allow the entry onto private property so long as the warden can articulate that they believed people were hunting or fishing. They do not always have to have probable cause that a violation occurred.

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And this.

antlerradar said:

Here in Montana Landowners are busted every year for transferring tags and a lot of other violations. Some landowners are the worst of the worst.

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In Colorado a CPW officer only needs cause to believe that hunting or fishing is occurring on the private land to enter (obviously this does not include search of structures, etc). Requiring probable cause that a violation is occurring would give free reign to landowners to do what they want. Also, many predominantly private areas would be nearly impossible to patrol without authority to use private roads, etc.

I'm sure opinions vary on this, but I believe that officers should be able to patrol all areas where hunting/fishing is occurring.

I guess you guys are right about the 4th if you are out in the open and have no reasonable expectation of privacy. http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-rights/when-the-fourth-amendment-applies.html

I can see both sides on this one. For example, wardens should definitely be able to walk through a public access that is on private land. On the other hand, I don't think that a warden thinking I might be hunting is good enough reason to be trespassing on my land.

That all said... I'm shocked at the amount of poaching alleged here. I never understood why more money isn't allocated to wardens.

Had this discussion with a friend recently.

I think that we should be cautious of any law that further restricts a wardens ability to stop poaching and check hunters.

However, I am mindful that private property rights are also very important.

In our discussion, it was noted that, in general, landowners and wardens work quite well together and that legislation to make a wardens job more difficult to enforce wildlife laws on private land is not a good idea. It emboldens the outlaws, and amounts to a break-down in the collaboration that already exists.

IMO, a landowner that wants a warden to ticket trespassers and those that hunt illegally on private land, on the one hand, can not systematically take that wardens ability to access their land to enforce the law, away from them via legislation.

Its a two-way street, and if a landowner wants enforcement, then they have to grant access and make some reasonable concessions for access, otherwise the system breaks down.

At that point, why even have wardens, if they cant enforce game laws on private property?

These types of laws seem to me like they are trying to fix a problem that largely doesn't exist, with the exception of making it easier for outlaws to become even more bold outlaws.

Doesn't "fix" anything...

http://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-04/19-open-fields.html

The open fields doctrine is what many wildlife agents operate under, USFWS included. However, as I said Montana has two supreme court rulings that extend curtilage to well beyond homes and outbuildings and there is no provision in Montana code that allows them to enter posted private property.

Buzz pretty well articulated why it's a bad deal when it comes to protecting a publicly owned resource.