Massachusetts deer season
December 3rd, 2005 by Administrator
Greed infecting Massachusetts deer season - On Monday morning, Nov. 28, dawn came a few minutes early as the woods became infested with fluorescent orange clad deer hunters. It’s opening day of deer season, the pinnacle of the hunting for all the New England states, including us in Massachusetts .
The seasonal bag limit for deer in Massachusetts is two antlered-tagged deer. These deer can be shot on the same day. It wasn’t always this way. For years, the seasonal limit was one deer per year. Then it changed to two deer a year, but hunters could still only take one deer a day until two deer were shot.
A few years back, Massachusetts decided to change this law again and allow a hunter to shoot two deer in one day. This was implemented because the state was down a few deer-checking stations and hunters were losing valuable hunting time driving their deer to get them checked. In other words, if a hunter only had a few days to hunt, he didn’t want to spend most of it driving around getting his deer checked in.
This is all well and good, and it makes sense from a theoretical point of view. The problem with this new, two-deer-per-day law is that it is being interpreted as an open season on all deer that pass by. The new law states that a hunter upon shooting his first deer must detach his deer tag and attach it to the deer carcass before moving it. Then a hunter can legally hunt for another deer.
The intention of this law was not to enable hunters to ‘double up’ on deer as they walk past his tree-stand. Unfortunately, some hunters think that this is the correct interpretation, or they figure “Why not, no one will ever know.” This is the epitome of greed, and it’s not how deer should be hunted or shot. The white-tailed deer is our most majestic big game animal, and to take two animals in one sitting is wrong, I don’t care how you slice it.
This new law encourages this type of thinking, and it enables hunters to make bad shooting decisions. In other states with much healthier deer populations than Massachusetts, this practice is not allowed, nor should it be. You don’t see “The Buckmasters Show” killing two deer on all these private ranches in Texas, because it’s considered inappropriate. It’s like shooting a pheasant that’s on the ground, not illegal but highly frowned upon. It’s just not the way it’s supposed to be done
By Dave Willette, North Adams Transcript