Daily Bag Limit/Possession Limit?

[sakoshooter]

Right you can have 14 in your possession, but you can still go hunting the day after you have 14, as long as you dont have them in your possesion at the time you are hunting. 

Daily bag limit is how many you can shoot in one day.  Possession limit is the total number you can have in your possession.  If the possession limit is 14, you cannot possess more than 14 at one time.  If you shot 7 yesterday, and 7 today, then you can't shoot any tomorrow. CORRECT

That's not true.  Possession limit is 14, period.  You can't have more than 14 ducks in your possession at any given time.  Nowhere does it say "in the field".  Possession means at your house, at your camp, in your freezer.  What may be an out here is if they are processed like into pepperoni.  If the game warden shows up at your house though and you have more than 14 ducks, I think you're screwed.

THIS IS TOTALLY UNTRUE.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The federal possesion limit ONLY applies to between the place you kill the waterfowl TO your vehicle or place of permanent or temporary abode or other facilities.

IT DOES NOT APPLY TO YOUR FREEZER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Field possession limit:No person shall possess, have in custody,
or transport more than the daily bag limit
or aggregate daily bag limit, whichever
applies, of migratory game birds, tagged or
not tagged, at or between the place where
taken and either:a) His automobile or principal means of
land transportation; or
b) His personal abode or temporary or
transient place of lodging; or
c) A migratory bird preservation facility;
or
d) A post office; or
e) A common carrier facility.

Tell em Fishncliff. We went thru this pretty thoroughly last year. You could probably do a search and come up with a 20+ pg thread but Fishncliff pretty much sums it up right here.

[saltwaterhillbilly]

Looks like its time to break out the Crayola box and dumb it down even more, i forgot that in todays day and age folks aint born with common since!

[Atroxus]

Looks like its time to break out the Crayola box and dumb it down even more, i forgot that in todays day and age folks aint born with common since!

Personally I am more inclined to believe a post with references to applicable legal code such as the one from h20fowlr which I quoted below. If you know of a place that clarifies or refutes h2ofowlr's post maybe you should share it instead of of saying that people have no common sense. 

Question asked: The question I have is in regards to this daily limit and possesion limit
scenario:


Does prepared duck meat e.g. frozen (raw or cooked) duck sausage, dried
duck jerky, pre-baked and frozen whole duck or canned duck continue to be
part of the posession limit? What is the the law on this and where in
the CFR is is located?
Thank you for the consideration in answering this.

USFW RESPONSE

Thank you for your inquiry regarding possession limits. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's mission is, working with others, to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.

In 50 CFR 20.11 you will find the definition of possession limit-

"Possession limit means the maximum number of migratory game birds of a single species or a
combination of species permitted to be possessed by any one person when lawfully taken in the
United States in any one specified geographic area for which a possession limit is prescribed."

In 50 CFR 10.12 possession itself is defined-

"Possession means the detention and control, or the manual or ideal
custody of anything which may be the subject of property, for one's use
and enjoyment, either as owner or as the proprietor of a qualified right
in it, and either held personally or by another who exercises it in
one's place and name. Possession includes the act or state of possessing
and that condition of facts under which one can exercise his power over
a corporeal thing at his pleasure to the exclusion of all other persons.
Possession includes constructive possession which means not actual but
assumed to exist, where one claims to hold by virtue of some title,
without having actual custody."

Possession ends when the object ceases to exist such as when a bird is consumed and the remaining parts are discarded. Simply making the waterfowl into sausage, jerky, or other products does not constitute an end to possession.

Thank you for your cooperation in complying with our regulations that help protect fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats. Please feel free to respond to this message with any further inquiries that you may have regarding this matter.

_____________________________
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Office of Law Enforcement
4401 N. Fairfax Drive (Mailstop: LE-3000)
Arlington, Virginia 22203

[saltwaterhillbilly]

Maybe i have a different way of looking at and reading the regs than others that need a more clear explanation of them but i understand it just fine and some folks don't so they need to break out some way of dumbing it down as we use in the military for terminology sorry if you took offense to this and didn't understand my 

[Atroxus]

Maybe i have a different way of looking at and reading the regs than others that need a more clear explanation of them but i understand it just fine and some folks don't so they need to break out some way of dumbing it down as we use in the military for terminology sorry if you took offense to this and didn't understand my 

Unfortunately when it comes to laws/regulations they tend to be written by lawyers and/or politicians, so they are either so complicated you need a degree to understand them or so vague that they can be exploited. In this case it seems to be the latter. If you go by the letter that h20 got from USFW then it seems that any number of birds that you have on you or at home count. So lets say I have 7 ducks in the freezer, and one that I got mounted by a taxidermist that I can only harvest 6 more. This would really suck for someone that has a lot of duck mounts. Someone else though might interpret it that the mounts don't count. That's really where the problem lies, it seems to be open for interpretation. When we have laws or regulations that are open for interpretation that means we have the potential for people who believe they are following the law to be arrested and/or fined because a LEO or worse, a judge interprets it differently. I bet if 5 of us sent emails to USFW with the same question we would get back *at least* 2 different interpretations of the law on this.

[saltwaterhillbilly]

Yes i totally agree with that but some people though just need an illustration

[h2ofowlr]

A mounted duck would be a consumed carcase, unless you leave the inards in it and throw it on the wall!  If solid and frozen waiting to go to the taxi. then it would go towards your bag limit!

[Tealer]

A mounted duck would be a consumed carcase, unless you leave the inards in it and throw it on the wall!  If solid and frozen waiting to go to the taxi. then it would go towards your bag limit!

Looks like I need to drop some birds off at the taxi.

Ever wonder if they warden would enforce this law if you were legal in every other aspect?

[Skagit_Hunter]

straight forward rules. If you don't understand you prob shouldn't be hunting

[Atroxus]

straight forward rules. If you don't understand you prob shouldn't be hunting

That's right up there with "I know, but I'm not gonna tell" If it was that "straight forward" this thread would not be pages long.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

[bronczilla]

I guess Im lucky that my family loves duck, we eat ours within a few days.

[snocohunter]

I am going to personally continue to follow the posession rule as it applies to my immediate posession. On my person, or in my vehicle. Same goes with fishing. In my boat, or in the cooler in the truck. We all know that F&W is almost without a doubt never going to come to your house to see how many ducks are in the freezer. Don't over harvest, and mind your manners, and you'll be fine. When i bring back 5 days worth of fish from oregon i'm not going to be in violation of a posession limit. That would be ridiculous.

[Atroxus]

I am curious what OutdoorGuardian thinks? It would be interesting to see how WDFW interprets/enforces it.

[Bob33]

I recently asked this very question to an enforcement officer who attends our hunter education classes.  His intepretation was that game in a freezer is not part of a possession limit.

My suspicion is that while game in a freezer is technically/letter of the law part of a possession limit, no one would be cited for that unless there was some other cause.

[7mmfan]

I know this is beating a dead horse, but I feel compelled to add my  . My first year guiding in AK, I got into a little trouble because I misunderstood possession limits as well. Had 3 days of limits at the end of a 3 days trip, while the possession limit was 2 days worth of limits.

What the agent in AK told me when he issued my citation was that the fish no longer apply to my possession limit once they have been processed.

Processed was defined as meat that was prepared or preserved in such a way that made it fit for human consumption after two weeks. This meant; smoked, salted, frozen, canned, etc...  Simply in a cooler on ice was not sufficient.

Once the meat was processed, that daily bag limit no longer applied to the possession limit.

Since this ordeal I have applied the same rule to my fishing and hunting here in WA, and had zero issues with any LEO.


It was interesting to read the response from the USFW though. I'm really surprised that is how they interpret possession limit.