Y'all are right about one thing:

He better hope I'm not on the jury!

And 49'er.....

YOU ARE STILL DANCING ALL AROUND A STRAIGHT ANSWER TO A SIMPLE QUESTION!

Troy,

Common Sense just ain't so common anymore. LOL

Rob, trust me you don't want law enforcement WITHOUT any judgement calls...only by the letter of the law. What we do want is Officers with GOOD judgement.

Take an example of a man taking his five year old fishing. Dad sets up the tackle, baits the hook, and casts the line out, and immediately hands the rod to his child. Technically, by the law, dad was fishing. He dosen't have a license...he gets arrested by ol Letter of the Law Officer.

When I was working I'd set and watch a fella to see how it played out. Above senario would be no ticket, no warning, ya'll have a nice day.

Now same setting, lil different. Dad is tossing a baitcasting reel, with a Zara Spook on it. He casts, works the lure, hooks the fish, reels it to the banks and allows junior to "help" pull it on the bank. What do you think and would you check his license???

Same set but dad dosen't let junior do anything but watch...and when you approach him dad says junior is the one fishing and hands the rod to him.....

Tell me again you don't want any judgement calls made by LEOs.......

and, for the record, I HAVE seen bad judgement calls made by LEOs....but I believe, after 26 years of enforcement, that the good far, far, outweighs the bad.

troy

btw...I ain't wrong....

Hell Troy you may not be wrong. I was not there neither were you. But just going by what Bucky says it would have been hard for me to say that he was hunting.

60% of his body he cannot use. I am sure that the LEO ran a check on him before he wrote the ticket. If he has a problem walking, has to stop from time to time. Hell all I am saying is, I would have thanked him for his service and told him to come back anytime.

If I am out of line, I am sorry. Maybe it is the young people today that don't have any respect for anyone.


Yes I would check his license. yes I would write him a ticket. even if he was giving it to his child to real in. YES YES YES. But he was not walking with his fishing pole, he was sitting down with it. or he was standing up, but he was actively trying to catch a fish. I think it is a little different. MAYBE IT IS NOT.

Hell maybe I am completely wrong. I just don't see it.

I can't see how there is not reasonable doubt. How can there not be.

Troy,
I have a lot of respect for the LEO,s. When the F5 tornado hit Pleasant Grove, AL on April 5, 1998. LEO's, Firefighters, and Paramedics poured in from all over the state to help. All of their radio's were crystal controlled and on differenr frequencies, some were even on the the trunk system. I have a HAM license and volunteered to help with the communications since I could talk on all the frequencies. Robbie Love of the Concord fire department put me in charge of communications to help coordinate the search and rescue. I saw and talked to these guys for abot 72 hours. I saw them put themselves at risk to get people out of some very bad situations. From walking around live power lines to entering structures that could collapse at any moment they never hesitated.
In no way do I think we could do without our LEO's. I simply think they made a bad call on this and that is why I am fighting it. Chris and Keith both seem like very professional officers, but they were wrong on this one.

From wading through this whole mess and reading.......this whole situation would have been avoided by simply removing the clip and ALL ammo from the gun before walking back to the truck.

Agreed it could have. But that still violates the constitution. That is what 49er and I have been saying for the whole thread.

He has the right to a loaded firearm. period.

If that law/reg requires his gun to be unloaded. Then that reg steps on the consitution of the US and Alabama.

So contact the NRA or 2nd Amendment Foundation, ask for assistance to argue that and go after them.

Maybe.

But there is no law against walking back to your truck with a loaded firearm. That is your constitutional right.

There is a law against coercing someone to refrain from doing something that is lawful:


emphasis added

Game wardens have no authority to keep you from doing a lawful act.

How many of us completely unload when transiting through area that is no hunting? We pass through that area and continue to hunt where it is allowed. I specifically asked the officer if the problem was the rifle. The officer stated no, the problem was that I was hunting from a railroad track. I would have gotten the same ticket even if carrying a bow and arrow. The officer then asked if a large buck had run out would I have tried to shoot it. I told him I probably would have been tempted but wouldn’t have shot. I also told him if the Swedish bikini team had shown up and invited me skinny dipping I would have been tempted to do that also but wouldn’t have. I had this conversation again on Dec. 18. with the officer. The officer showed me 9-11-257 then showed me the definition of hunting as posted in the 2010-2011 regulation book. Again the officer clearly stated the problem was never the rifle but that I was hunting. When asked what made it that I was hunting I was told because I was walking slow and looking. I have walked boundary roads, timber operations, public roads, within a half mile of a church on Sunday and in the dark, in the wee hours of November 14th prior to opening and never had a problem. I will swear this to anything sacred or loved in any court of law. In my opinion, I was within the law. If a jury of my peers find me guilty then I will live with it. But I still feel that I did absolutely nothing wrong. I have spent my life trying to do the right thing, this is the only time I have had to defend myself in court and it has been an eye opening experience as to our judicial system.

I can't help you there because I'm one of those people. If my gun has a clip, the clip is removed. If it's a shotgun, all shells are unloaded. There's no reason to NOT unload.
My father received a ticket similar to this many years ago. He was turkey hunting and heard a gobbler. To get to him he had to cross a corner of someone elses property. We had permission to cross but not to hunt. This one morning he decided not to unload his gun before he crossed. About half way across the corner he met a man wearing a green uniform that gave him a nice ticket for hunting on property without permission. I was with him but was only 12. The lesson I learned was to never put yourself in a situation where you can be accused of something. That's why I ALWAYS unload. I even make it a point to unload my gun before I get within 100 yards of any road when returning to my truck instead of unloading at the truck.
I guess you have to ask yourself in this situation, if you were a game warden and ran across a man with rounds in the clip of his gun and that clip was in the gun, what would you feel that person was doing? I guess you could just ask that person because we all know that EVERYONE would be perfectly honest in answering. I'm not saying what your intentions were because only you know. Sometimes you have to look at things from the other side though and put yourself in the other mans shoes. I'm sure the officer had ran into several people before you that hadn't done anything wrong either......at least that's what they all said. From reading your replies I feel that this was, if anything, just an honest mistake for not taking the clip out. A bad judgement call if you will. Good luck to you.

So by your thought process, there is no place that you could legally and constitutionally be forbidden to possess a loaded firearm?

And the whole disabled veteran bit is a weak argument; some of the most rule-bending, regulation-skirting, and sometimes law-breaking hunters on the place where I hunt consist of retired and retired disabled (according to the VA) veterans. When they get caught, the GW treats them like he would treat the rest of us non-disabled veterans and those that have never served a day in uniform - as somebody that willingly or unwillingly violated a law, regulation, or site rule.

I give up. Have a great time in Jail Bucky. Next time you feel like giving the state 1000.00 bring a chair with you. so you can sit down and hunt.

There is no reasonable doubt here. Your word does not count for anything. You have no defense, hell they want even let you tesify in your own defense.

I've been folowing this thread since it started, and I can honestly say I can understand both sides. Let me share a true stry that happened to me last year. Bear with me...

I was hunting on a WMA in Virginia (I was a resident @ the time),my partner and I hunted until dark and then met @ a prearranged location to walk back to the vehicle. We were walking on the road and heard deer on one corner of the woods. We stopped, listened, and even shouldered our guns. We were whispering to each other about them, where did they come out, where to set up tomorrow, etc. We came up with a plan, and then walked on to the vehicle.

We unloaded our guns and then : Bright light in our faces. Yep, GW.

He said he heard us the whole time and could get us on night hunting, hunting from a road and harrassing wildlife. My thoughts at the time was "sh!t; iwasnt hunting, I was done for the day".

He went on to warn us only.

Bottomline: I was damn lucky. I could have been royally flushed. The GW would have been justified for charging us with the whole shebang. TECHNICALLY we broke all those rules. However, the fact that he overheard our conversation, he could tell that we had no intention of shooting (unless we were charged at) and could tell we weren't hunting but TECHNICALLY SCOUTING for the next day.

I reitterate: we were lucky.

Btw, he got to know us and would ask us if we noticed anything goofy going on
(carcasses of illegal kills). I guess he turned us into informants

Moral of the story: on public land, I now follow every "jot and tittle" of any rule, regulation, whatever. Walkng in a questionable area w/ rounds in my weapon is not worth losing my privilege to hunt...

The fine is four times the fine for hunting out of season.

The fine is ten times the fine for hunting without a license.

The fine is forty times the fine for hunting without a WMA license.

Must be a terrible threat to our natural resources to look into the woods while walking back to your truck.

I wonder what the fine is for doing it in Wal-Mart?? or the local library? or the bank??

They are all considered Private Property like the RR.

There's not one. They are all considered public places. If you have actually read the law you should know that.

If they ask you to leave and you don't, then you're liable to be charged with criminal trespassing and a fine might follow if it is pursued by the landowner... just like walking down a railroad that ain't posted. The landowner or his agent can tell you to leave.

If you're going to argue the law, you need to read it and try to comprehend what you read. Just pulling things out of your rear end don't cut it.

9-11-257 does not deal with trespassing. Until you get past that notion, you're not going to understand the problem.

you need a bigger bag of popcorn.......

Reckon this one is big enough?

Well MT, since we are still having fun, here's you some more popcorn to munch on:


The DCNR's outhouse version of the laws and regulations [Hunter's Digest] states:




Notice this statement in particular: "It is illegal to take any action to harvest a deer within the 50 yard restricted area with a weapon or shot listed above."

This is a publication authorized by the DCNR. It states the agency's interpretation of the law even though it does not fulfill the requirements of the law. [The paraphrasing is terribly erroneous, BTW. It is not illegal to kill a deer within 50 yards of the road under many different circumstances.]



So, since the DCNR is splitting hairs, what does the official pamplet that is required by 9-2-8 say?

It does not say anything because it does not exist. Why does it not exist?



Who has clearly broken the law beyond a reasonable doubt?

Is it Bucky, or the Commissioner of Conservation and Natural Resources?

You be the judge.