I have a small farm I am able to hunt on because my wife keeps her 11 bee hives there and shares the honey with the farmer's wife who sells it at a roadside stand. Was sitting quietly in my blind at 6:45 on Saturday morning, waiting for "my deer" to show up between 7:00 and 7:30 as the trail cam shows they do pretty regularly. Then at 6:46, I hear a shotgun being fired 6 times over about a 20-second span at the farm about 200 yards across the road from my blind. Needless to say, no deer show up at my blind that morning. Since it was the opening of Muzzleloader season on Saturday, when I heard the first shot go off I thought it might just be another "traditional" guy getting it done. The rapid fire of the rest of the shots immediately told me that was not the case. While squirrel season is open, the farmer across the road was not hunting squirrels. According to discussion I later had with the farmer I know, the farmer across the road has been shooting deer with a slug gun to prevent crop damage. While I have not researched it, apparently PA has some pretty liberal rules concerning crop damage mitigation and you can basically shoot whatever you need to 24/7/365 day or night. Just call the ranger, report the problem, and open fire. So the game appears to be plant a small patch of feed crops the deer like, deer eat your crops, call ranger, shoot deer. Like I said in the title, it ain't poaching, but it sure felt like it to me on Saturday morning.
Okay, I'll stop whining now....
I’ll keep it real.
I‘m off today and I’m going to shoot some arrows >>>——>
No worries fellows, I ain't upset. Just (hopefully) keeping it real.
You can butcher a hoofed animal that someone else kills and charge them for the service (like deer processing). But if you raise the animal and kill/butcher it, you cannot sell it to another without a USDA inspector involved. Simple as that. Chuck, you are right, I said FDA when I meant USDA.
As a small farmer myself, I find it an irksome law that keeps the competition for the large meat producers to a minimum. For a small farmer, butchering costs amount to about half the cost of goods for selling meat.
It seemed to me that the intent of the story was to belittle city-folk and make them look like morons. I just thought I'd point out that the country fellow had his short comings as well.
Most of my customers are city-folk. While I'm sure there are plenty of ding-bats out there, in my experience city-folk are at least as clever as my country neighbors.
Steve...its a little more complicated. For normal livestock like bovine etc it is USDA. For some i will call exotics FDA gets involved. USDA has an on-site inspector. Generally FDA does not. I also think there are exclusions for custom processing, ie...my cow, for me, even if you get paid to do it. ( not certain on that last).
It's illegal to kill and butcher hoofed animals for sale unless an FDA inspector witnesses the slaughter. So the rancher was "guilty" of a crime, just not the one he was accused of.
Here’s one that you will enjoy.
A few years back a young couple from the big city moved to the country area of Deland, Florida. One afternoon the misses hears gun shoots coming from the house next door. She looks through the window towards the property next door. Several minutes later she see’s a man walking around the house next door with what appears to be blood stains on his shirt and he was wearing rubber gloves. She was in fear for life, did the neighbor just commit a murder?
Without hesitation she picked up the phone and dialed 911. She told the operator that she heard gun shots and she seen a man wearing bloody clothes.
Within a few minutes multiple police arrive surrounding the residence. One officer got on a bull-horn and said, “Police, Come out with your hands up!!”
The man that the lady seen with the bloody shirt emerged with the gun on his side in a holster. The police yelled through the bullhorn, put the weapon on the ground and place your hands behind your head. The man put his hands behind his head and yelled back, I DON’T HAVE A WEAPON!!
The officers yelled again put the weapon on the ground, and the man said, Sir, I don’t have a weapon look, my hands are empty!
The officers replied, the weapon is on the side of your waist in a holster, put it on the ground now!!
The man said, officer, this is not a weapon, it’s a tool!! I‘m a rancher, and I use this pistol to kill animals before I butcher them and sometimes I use it to kill predators trying to kill my livestock.
The officers put down their guns and holstered them. They checked out the old man’s story and it was true. He lived on the property his whole life raising animals and selling the meat.
Before leaving the officers went to the young city women‘s house. They wanted to tell the young lady what she heard and seen.
The officer said Miss, your neighbor, is a rancher/butcher. He raises animals and sells the meat. The gunshot you heard earlier came from the tool he uses on the animals before he butchers them. The lady replied, I never heard such a story to cover up a murder. Where I go to buy meat, the meat is packaged in a nice clear plastic wrapper and the meat never has bullet holes.
The farmers see them bunched together at night and figure there is one behind every tree. A lot of crop damage is done by raccoon, squirrels, and groundhogs but gets blamed on the deer. If you have ever seen a flock of geese land in standing corn, it is amazing how much damage they do. They know that if they knock down the stalks, they can feed on the corn
Apple Orchard, but If you decide to plant a field, and the crop is not edible, they might charge you with "baiting", so be careful. My brother use to live on 5 ac west of Spokane, and in the winter, a moose and calf were seen feeding on a small tree in his front yard. Definitely not edible, but the moose liked it.
They call it "depredation" in NC. It used to be that a farmer had to have a WRC officer come out and inspect the crop damage before issuing a depredation permit. The law was changed to remove the need for a permit (government interference I suppose) and now you can kill any deer you want anytime you want for the simple crime of being in your yard. It has gotten better though...
Just a few years ago it was legal to kill the deer, but illegal to harvest the meat. So farmers would shoot the deer in the belly with a .22 so they would run into the woods to die.
Even though the law has been changed to allow the harvest of meat, most still just shoot them in the belly.
That sucks rotten eggs Bob!!!!
Keep after them!
Bisch
We are problem solvers. Unfortunately....it is often a problem that we start. Think of what we could get done if we used all those brains for good things, and not to "get around" things.