CDR: Recent Hunting Incident

[Bill Secraw]

October 9, 2000

This message is to alert United States citizens of targeting by Canada conservation officers threatening excessive penalties of alleged minor violations and exercising kangaroo court activities to achieve their goals. This message is also aimed at Canada citizens to urge their elected officials to monitor such activity and also urge them to repeal the current gun law registration regulations. These laws will not succeed in achieving the intended purpose, but only increase your taxes and insure the full employment of gun enforcement officers. 

I would like now to summarize an incident I had on a goose-hunting trip near Lake Lenore and Humboldt Saskatchewan. While driving down a road with my son and cousin, we noticed a flock of white geese out in the middle of a quarter section of land. 

I dropped my son and cousin off and my mission was to flush the birds and hopefully one would by chance fly over them and they could attempt to shoot it. Because they were quite a distant out in the field I attempted to drive my van closer to the flock to I could get out and flush the geese. Being more wary then expected the geese flushed before I could get very close to them so I turned around and exited the field. While driving down a public road after exiting the field conservation officer approached from the opposite direction and turned on his red lights and pulled me over. He accused me of chasing geese with a vehicle and proceeds to threaten me that the penalties could be very severe including confiscation of my vehicle, $50,000 fine, and arrest. He also asks to check my gun, which is in a case and in back of my van. He also attempts to confiscate my gun because he says I do not have a proper plug in it. I explain to him that the gun will only hold three 3 ½ inch shells, which was all that I was shooting. After checking with his office they determined that was ok. He then gives me an appearance notice to appear in provincial court and seizes one of our guns to assure that I will make an appearance and the penalty accessed will be determined by the judge. On the notice the section which contains the alleged crime is left blank so that I have no way of knowing what specific violation I will be charged with or what the penalties could really be. 

When court date arrives I drive to the office of the conservation officer where court is held. The judge is actually a justice of the peace who also operates an automobile body shop in town. The conservation officer tells me that court may be a little late as the owner of the body shop had some employees that did not come in so it would be a while before he could come over and act as judge. When the judge arrives, he comes in is auto body uniform and the conservation officer reads some prepared script that provincial court under the crown is now in session. Just to paint a clear picture the court consists of two people, one being the Justice of the Peace and the other being the conservation officer who is acting as chief witness, prosecuting attorney, court reporter, clerk and any other function that most courts have. My name is read and I am asked to come forward. The conservation officer asks me if I plead guilty. I said plead guilty to what, the appearance notice that I was given does not have any alleged violation on it. I than recounted my story of what actually happened. I was than shown an Information Denonciation form that said I unlawfully used a vehicle to drive migratory birds to hunters. Since I did not know what I was going to be charged with, I had no way to defend what actually happened. 

Since then I have looked up the word drive in Webster’s dictionary and the following is a definition. 1 a : to frighten or prod (as game or cattle) into moving in a desired direction b : to go through (a district) driving game animals. 

As you see the definition does not say birds. Now I would ask anyone to perform the following experiment. Drop two hunters off randomly on the perimeter of a quarter section of land. Drive your vehicle slowly, not more than 10 mph, toward a flock of birds in the middle of the field and see if there is any predictability where those birds will fly, much less come within shooting range of a hunter. I believe any attempt to flush birds consistently to a desired location at that distance will prove futile. 

Now for the statement that the judge made that we have to have these laws and penalty’s to protect our resource. These birds were white geese, which are rapidly becoming a nuisance bird. These birds are ruining their arctic breeding grounds, as vast areas are becoming barren as these birds pull the vegetation roots out of the fragile tundra. They also do considerable damage to the farmer’s crops near Humboldt as a flock of thousands of these geese can ruin a field in one day. The local farmers urge hunters to shoot as many as possible because of all the damage they do. The providence of Saskatchewan has also a very liberal bag limit of 20 a day and a possession limit of 60. Many states in the USA have no possession limit and urge the shooting of as many as possible of these birds with nearly any means possible. I really do not think the argument of protecting this resource is very valid.

As far as pleading guilty or innocent to the charges, I would ask any rational human being to explore the options. The judge imposes a fine of $200 lowering the suggested fine of the conservation warden by $50. The conservation warden reminds the judge of some recently imposed surcharge of $30 and tells him to change the fine to $230. The options are either plead guilty and pay the $230 or plead not guilty and return the 1000 plus miles at a later date for a trial while $700 gun is confiscated until the trial.

Local residents informed me that it is a common practice for conservation wardens to target USA residents to increase their tax coffers. While in Saskatchewan I was listening to a local radio station and they were discussing the brain drain of Saskatchewan residents to the USA with the main reason being taxes and bureaucracy. The new gun registration law is just another example of a law, which will only keep bureaucrats employed and do little to curb crime. Part of the new law will imposes a $50 tax on all guns brought across the border by USA citizens. I believe there is also about a $60 fee for all Canada citizens to register their guns. I can just envision the activity of the kangaroo courts to comply with this.

I have made my decision that I will not come to Canada again for hunting or fishing because of their excessive tax and being targeted.

The final straw was recent treatment I received and the recent tax on guns. This along with their excessive tax on liquor, beer, cigarettes, gas, gst, provincial tax, etc. will deter many from this country.

Hopefully this message can be distributed over the world via the Internet and hopefully change can be made before it is too late. The actions of over zealous conservation officers need to be curtailed, a proper system of justice needs to be put in place, and the gun registration system needs to be abandoned. Only with adverse economic impact of tourists not coming and Canada citizens getting fed up with their government will this happen.

Anyone receiving this message electronically or in paper form is urged to distribute it to as many as possible.

Bsecraw at execpc.com

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