johntheplinker
Master
The entire concept of government agents accessing my land without my permission or knowledge for the purpose of observing and recording my activities is unbelievable to me. Unless, I suppose, they had suspicion I was engaging in illegal activities. It doesn't strike me to be categorically any different from a wiretap (which you have to obtain a court order to perform, right?). If the placing of trailcams on my land is done without cause, then I think it is trespassing. Period.
It seems the two circumstances depicted in the article have one thing in common - both were previously found to be engaging in illegal activities, which I have a very strong opinion about. If you are known to have willfully broken the law in the past, you are defacto predisposed to break it again, so you reap what you sow. But on the flip side I have to ask "Don't these 'fish police' have better things to do than snoop on bird baiters?" I don't hunt birds so I don't know if this is sinister enough to merit this amount of taxpayer money spent to catch the perps if they do it again. Is it worse than exceeding the speed limit?
Most states that I know about the fish cops have a lot of powers that regular cops don't have. Reasoning I've seen is that wild game and fish are more or less state property, and since the FCs are responsible for enforcing the laws regarding those resources, they can go just about anywhere there are wild animals and fish. One reason the FCs are used a lot raiding pot grows, they can justify being there by checking wildlife, and just sort of "find" the weed.
A big thing too with the two cases in the story is both involved dove hunting. Since doves are a migratory species that also brings in Federal regulations as well as state level. Much larger fines, so more $ for everybody involved. The agency involved probably figured this would be an easy bust and being a second go round, even larger fines and possibly resulting in a felony with property seizure.
Plus the FCs got to use the cool new toys they might have bought with the money from the original bust. Be interesting to know if these 2 properties were the only ones with cameras in that area, or if there were more.