Safe Urban Hunting

Edit - Deleting my response as the OP sent me a PM telling me that he didn't think my opinion was "valid"

Urban hunting poses specific challenges. As always safety must be our first concern and our second one and so on. Usually when we think about guns and safety we are referring to being safe in our handling of dangerous weapons. This is as it should be. We should not, however, lose sight of the fact that often times we are holding a weapon that many people, and sometimes even law-enforcement, will not immediately identify as a pellet gun. We have seen too many times how someone armed with a non-lethal weapon has been killed by police who mis-identified it as a lethal one. Without assigning blame to those incidents, we must consider ways of avoiding them. 

I purchased a roll of 2 inch wide red tape and wrapped a wide band of red around the tips of my air rifles. Since airsoft guns and toy guns have this feature, it might be enough to cause someone to double check. I also am very aware of my surroundings and ensure that no one can say I was shooting in their direction. Since I am usually near a road I am looking for police vehicles. Should one approach, I put my rifle down, take a couple of steps away from it, and face them with my hands away from my body. This presents a nonthreatening profile and facilitates a good start to the conversation. 

At this point it is helpful to know your law. Know that what you were doing and where you are doing it are both legal and safe and you can articulate as such. You can only shoot on private property with permission of the landowner. Florida's state-managed public lands are open year-round, no permits or licenses required, to hunt invasive species with an air rifle. Before the Florida Freshwater Fish and Wlidlife Commission (FWC) put out a press release encouraging Florida residents to kill as many iguanas as possible, there was widespread confusion on the subject. I saw on YouTube, law officers who should know better ordering iguana trappers to release their catch. One even said they were protected, LMAO. For information, releasing iguanas is a crime in Florida. Once the caught, they must be euthanized by law. 

As always the all too uncommon common sense should dictate our actions. You gunners out there doing your pesting on your wide-open properties should know how lucky you are. That said, I did take my first hundred plus iguanas from my backyard. 

Happy hunting and stay safe!

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How can you be safe if you believe an airgun is NON-LETHAL,!!!!! Sorry but you should first and foremost understand that what you are using is or can be lethal.

One step you can take is to inform your local law enforcement what you are doing. In your state the iguana in mine it's feral hogs. When I am taking care of them in area's close to apartments or homes I let law and game enforcement know what is going on. Another when possible do the same with your neighbors 

It is always your responsibility to do all that is necessary to protect yourself and ensure the safety of everyone around you. Ignorance and stupidity comes into play too often and may cause unpredictable outcome. I always listen to LEO's and never try to prove who is right or wrong. Safety is the number one issue and we all should know that AIRGUNS are lethal weapons in the wrong hands. 

Now lets kill iguanas and be safe and smart while doing it.

Yep, You see someone walking around with a Impact, or a Veteran its not going to look like a pellet gun to 99.9 % of most people LEO or not, Be careful how me present our guns.

Mike 

Urban hunting poses specific challenges. As always safety must be our first concern and our second one and so on. Usually when we think about guns and safety we are referring to being safe in our handling of dangerous weapons. This is as it should be. We should not, however, lose sight of the fact that often times we are holding a weapon that many people, and sometimes even law-enforcement, will not immediately identify as a pellet gun. We have seen too many times how someone armed with a non-lethal weapon has been killed by police who mis-identified it as a lethal one. Without assigning blame to those incidents, we must consider ways of avoiding them. 

I purchased a roll of 2 inch wide red tape and wrapped a wide band of red around the tips of my air rifles. Since airsoft guns and toy guns have this feature, it might be enough to cause someone to double check. I also am very aware of my surroundings and ensure that no one can say I was shooting in their direction. Since I am usually near a road I am looking for police vehicles. Should one approach, I put my rifle down, take a couple of steps away from it, and face them with my hands away from my body. This presents a nonthreatening profile and facilitates a good start to the conversation. 

At this point it is helpful to know your law. Know that what you were doing and where you are doing it are both legal and safe and you can articulate as such. You can only shoot on private property with permission of the landowner. Florida's state-managed public lands are open year-round, no permits or licenses required, to hunt invasive species with an air rifle. Before the Florida Freshwater Fish and Wlidlife Commission (FWC) put out a press release encouraging Florida residents to kill as many iguanas as possible, there was widespread confusion on the subject. I saw on YouTube, law officers who should know better ordering iguana trappers to release their catch. One even said they were protected, LMAO. For information, releasing iguanas is a crime in Florida. Once the caught, they must be euthanized by law. 

As always the all too uncommon common sense should dictate our actions. You gunners out there doing your pesting on your wide-open properties should know how lucky you are. That said, I did take my first hundred plus iguanas from my backyard. 

Happy hunting and stay safe!

Click to expand...

How can you be safe if you believe an airgun is NON-LETHAL,!!!!! Sorry but you should first and foremost understand that what you are using is or can be lethal.

One step you can take is to inform your local law enforcement what you are doing. In your state the iguana in mine it's feral hogs. When I am taking care of them in area's close to apartments or homes I let law and game enforcement know what is going on. Another when possible do the same with your neighbors

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If you read his post over again, you will see that he did not state that pellet guns are non-lethal. He stated that there have been incidents where people holding non-lethal weapons have been shot by law enforcement officers who mis-identified the weapon as a lethal one. He used the term "dangerous weapon" to describe pellet guns. His entire post revolved around being as safe as possible while hunting and encountering law enforcement officers. I think GiveEmLead is very much aware our air rifles are lethal, and I appreciate his efforts to promote airgun safety by sharing his particular approach to this issue. 

On an additional note, I like your proactive stance about informing the law and game enforcement when working in close proximity to populated areas. When we take the lead like that, it can make things go much smoother. Shoot straight, brothers and sisters!

James

A “red” tip means something. A toy.

Not a good idea at all.

Actually putting a red top on an air rifle might be illegal, I think by fed law it has to be an airsoft, or bb gun that shoots less than a certain fps and not more than, doing so with one that does shoot more than might get you into trouble. Don't know that for certain though, OP if I misread your post intention of meaning on lethal weapon I'm sorry. 

Florida's state-managed public lands are open year-round, no permits or licenses required, to hunt invasive species with an air rifle.

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Most public land in Florida is actually closed to hunting in the off season, even for exotics such as iguanas. In 2017 the FWC issued an executive order allowing for iguana and other invasive reptile hunting to occur in 22 FWC managed areas in the South region of the State. At the time, pythons received more attention than iguanas but the order applied to iguanas as well. Nothing has changed since then. The FWC's public announcement didn't open up all areas to iguana hunting. 

Iguanas have never been protected on private land and always have been legal to harvest with airguns or other means. 

Here's the FWC order in question:

https://myfwc.com/media/3682/eo-17-11.pdf

Only those public lands named in the order are open to iguana hunting year-round. 

I'm a criminal prosecutor in Florida that handles the FWC's poaching cases in my area and I have deep ties to the FWC and its predecessor organization the GFC. We need to go thru this line by line to correct some of this info.

First, public land is not necessarily open to hunting until someone tells you otherwise. State owned land is managed by different state agencies, and its up to each state agency whether they'll allow hunting or not. Many of them have regulations buried in the Florida Administrative Code, and sometimes by legislative statute, that prohibits hunting unless stated otherwise. They don't need to post "no hunting" on the property. Its up to you to research it, and it may mean breaking open the lawbooks. The reason you can hunt the canal lands if you're in the Miami area is because the City is expressly allowing it. You're not allowed to hunt it by default. The City is giving you the same permission that a private landowner would on private land. 

You ought not be shooting anything within the right-of-way of a publicly maintain road. Its completely prohibited to do so. See Florida Administrative Code 68A-4.008. Only if the right-of-way is exempted and posted as being exempted are you allowed to take wildlife within the right-of-way of a road with a gun. The berm is considered a part of the right-of-way depending on how wide it is.

The Wildlife Management Areas fall under the FWC's direct management. It is a fact that WMAs are not open to hunting of exotics year-round by default. Each WMA has its own regulations that you must consult. The ONLY WMAs in Florida where you may hunt iguanas year-round are the 22 named WMA in that FWC executive order I posted. You may NOT iguana hunt year-round in any of the others unless the regulations of that WMA specifically say so. 

Here is the FWC page on iguanas:

https://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/profiles/reptiles/green-iguana/

You will see they reference the executive order I posted an also states that those 22 WMAs are open. There are 160 WMAs in the State. 22 out of 160 isn't many.

There are other WMAs open to iguana hunting, but only during other designated hunting seasons and when a person has the proper hunting and WMA licenses. Consult this list of brochures to see which ones:

https://myfwc.com/hunting/wma-brochures/

When the executive order went out 2 years ago, it was controversial because it did not open exotic reptile hunting in Big Cypress year-round, which is ground zero for the python problem. These rules are really about pythons. This public announcement the FWC did didn't change any regulations, it just brought to the public's attention that the python regulations also apply to iguanas. 

And just to show you how we role in Florida, and why Florida Man exists, here's why you have to do your research:

The FWC website and State-published brochure says the following about hunting reptiles in the right-of-way of a public road:

Taking or attempting to take wildlife is illegal on, upon or from rights-of-way of federal, state or county-maintained roads, whether paved or otherwise, except reptiles and amphibians may be taken without the use of firearms and raptors may be taken per Rule 68A-9.005, F.A.C. Casting dogs from rights-of-way is considered attempting to take wildlife and constitutes violation of this regulation.

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Ah. An airgun isn't a firearm. Therefore according to the FWC website it looks like I can take reptiles within the right-of-way of a road with an airgun. But then the website has this ominous warning:

This publication is provided as a guide to Florida hunting laws and regulations; however, the Wildlife Code of the State of Florida is the final authority on hunting laws. The Florida Wildlife Code, Division Number 68A of the Florida Administrative Code, can be obtained at flrules.org.

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So the website and brochure is a summary of the regulations, not the regulations themselves. If the summary is somehow wrong, then the actual regulation in the Code controls. Here's the real regulation about taking wildlife in a right-of-way:

68A-4.008 Taking Wildlife on Roads and Rights-of-Way Prohibited.

(1) It shall be unlawful to take or attempt to take wildlife (except for the collection of amphibians or reptiles without the use of a gun and the take of raptors per Rule 68A-9.005, F.A.C.) on, upon or from the right-of-way of any federal, state or county-maintained road whether paved or otherwise. Taking or attempting to take wildlife (except for the collection of amphibians and reptiles without the use of a gun and the take of raptors per Rule 68A-9.005, F.A.C.) while such wildlife is on or upon the right-of-way of any federal, state or county-maintained road whether paved or otherwise, is prohibited.

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Uh oh. Is an airgun a "gun?" Yes, under the definition provided in the regulations:

(40) Gun – Shotgun, rifle, pistol, revolver, air gun, gas gun, blow gun, bow, crossbow, or any other device mechanically propelling an arrow, spear, or other projectile.

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Therefore you may not take an iguana in the right-of-way of a road with an airgun. And it took digging beyond the wildlife agency's own website to get that answer. Whoever wrote the official state brochure wasn't careful.



Welcome to Florida. 

Bullfrog: very informative, thank you. I was told that you cannot shoot across a body of water eg. canals lakes etc. 

regards

Bulldog

Muchos gracias for this post! It is so hard to know what's legal even the cops get confused as one suburb bleeds into another. In my Dad's case he lives where the Everglades NP, Big Cypress Preserve and Fakkaunion State forest converge. Three sets of regulations within a half mile. 

Quick question can I indeed hunt iguanas in Big Cypress?

Thanks again for the post!

In most urban jurisdictions there are permissions required to shoot anything. While most jurisdictions outlaw discharging a firearm except at a range, most also require permission from local police to shoot archery, slingshots etc. within city or town limits. Most of which depends on the proximity of adjacent buildings or homes. So if you clear it through the chief, you’re good. If you come in contact with PD, just place the rifle on the deck and do what they say.

And just to show you how we role in Florida, and why Florida Man exists, here's why you have to do your research:

The FWC website and State-published brochure says the following about hunting reptiles in the right-of-way of a public road:

Taking or attempting to take wildlife is illegal on, upon or from rights-of-way of federal, state or county-maintained roads, whether paved or otherwise, except reptiles and amphibians may be taken without the use of firearms and raptors may be taken per Rule 68A-9.005, F.A.C. Casting dogs from rights-of-way is considered attempting to take wildlife and constitutes violation of this regulation.

Click to expand...

Ah. An airgun isn't a firearm. Therefore according to the FWC website it looks like I can take reptiles within the right-of-way of a road with an airgun. But then the website has this ominous warning:

This publication is provided as a guide to Florida hunting laws and regulations; however, the Wildlife Code of the State of Florida is the final authority on hunting laws. The Florida Wildlife Code, Division Number 68A of the Florida Administrative Code, can be obtained at flrules.org.

Click to expand...

So the website and brochure is a summary of the regulations, not the regulations themselves. If the summary is somehow wrong, then the actual regulation in the Code controls. Here's the real regulation about taking wildlife in a right-of-way:

68A-4.008 Taking Wildlife on Roads and Rights-of-Way Prohibited.

(1) It shall be unlawful to take or attempt to take wildlife (except for the collection of amphibians or reptiles without the use of a gun and the take of raptors per Rule 68A-9.005, F.A.C.) on, upon or from the right-of-way of any federal, state or county-maintained road whether paved or otherwise. Taking or attempting to take wildlife (except for the collection of amphibians and reptiles without the use of a gun and the take of raptors per Rule 68A-9.005, F.A.C.) while such wildlife is on or upon the right-of-way of any federal, state or county-maintained road whether paved or otherwise, is prohibited.

Click to expand...

Uh oh. Is an airgun a "gun?" Yes, under the definition provided in the regulations:

(40) Gun – Shotgun, rifle, pistol, revolver, air gun, gas gun, blow gun, bow, crossbow, or any other device mechanically propelling an arrow, spear, or other projectile.

Click to expand...

Therefore you may not take an iguana in the right-of-way of a road with an airgun. And it took digging beyond the wildlife agency's own website to get that answer. Whoever wrote the official state brochure wasn't careful.



Welcome to Florida. 

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Lots of good info!