From The Des Moines Register: Hunting blinds and tree stands on public lands would be required to have a metal identification tag with the owner’s name and address under a bill approved…by an Iowa Senate subcommittee.
Lawmakers agreed to strike a provision that the tag include a hunting license number.
The Iowa DNR is neither for not against it. Some Iowa hunting and outdoor groups are either neutral or have expressed no objections to the proposal.
Me? I don’t like it as a precedent that could spread to other states that I hunt.
When I started hunting many years ago, mostly on public land and leases with lots of other hunters, I never wanted other people to know where I was hunting. I didn’t have anything to hide, but every day I tried to sneak in and out of my stand without anybody seeing me. It is hard enough to scout a good buck and find a secret ridge or bottom to hunt him on public. Back in the old days, I looked at other hunters as my competition. I have mellowed on that with age, but to this day I like to keep a low profile and do my own thing in the woods.
If you or I had to hang a name a tag on a stand, it’s advertising to everybody in the area where we’re hunting. Humans are curious, most of the time too curious. If stands had to be tagged, most every nosy hunter that ran across an empty one would climb the steps just to see whose stand it was.
It’s a privacy issue for me. Our every move is already tracked these days by our smartphones and apps. It’s one thing to be tracked to the store, but it’s nobody’s business where I’m hunting.
How this tagging bill came about is unclear, but I guess it could help solve one potential problem—some stranger moving in and taking over your stand. For the life of me I cannot understand how anybody could climb up and hunt out of a random stand they just found in the woods, but it happens. And sometimes an ugly confrontation occurs. Maybe if stands were tagged, it would act as a deterrent to put an end to stand squatting.
The subcommittee approved this bill back in January 2016, and it was to advance to the Iowa Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee. No updates on when or if that will happen, so perhaps the bill has been tabled or quashed. This late in the summer it seems unlikely that name tags on stands would be required for the 2016 Iowa deer season, but be check the regs.
What do you think about name tags on stands? Make sense, or silly?
Since I posted this I have learned from bloggers and ppl on Twitter that many states have such tagging laws: Maine, SD, ND, MO, WI. IL and others…I will follow up with another post on this, this is one of those little laws that could potentially get an unwitting hunter in trouble.
In Pa. we recently had to start tagging our stands name, phone and address and guess what? Two of my public land hunting buddies began getting harassing phone calls…one went far enough to scream at his non hunting spouse threatening her in the most vulgar method possible…did it get reported to police? yes it did, did any thing result from the report no it did not.
HLM ( Hunters Lives Matter)
And an incident like that is exactly why I have a problem with a rule like this–privacy and in this extreme incident goes to safety. Plus, I don’t want guys like that knowing where I hunt and you shouldn’t either. I told you nosy guys would come along and read who owns the stand, and then the trouble can start, tho again I believe Daddy’s above story is the bad extreme.
I pulled this from another site….
In Indiana you can leave portable tree stands and ground blinds on state and federal lands from noon on September 15th through January 10th the next year. Hunters can mark their stands and blinds with their DNR- issued customer identification number or their name and address. Using the customer identification number allows only Conservation or Wish and Wildlife employees the ability to look up your information, giving hunters more privacy when it comes to putting your stand out on public lands.
Maybe Iowa could use the license or customer ID number too.
Thanks Jim. Hunters from other states please let me know what your law is on tagging stands so I can follow up with another post