Shooting Deer From a Deer Blind Is “Pursuing” Deer For Which A Hunter Needs a License

State v. Schmid, Minn.Ct.App., 12/23/2013.  Every so often the court of appeals pursues the finer nuances of deer hunting.  Last time out it had something to do with pumpkins.  Read here.  This go round it’s about stalking.

A game warden found Mr. Schmid in a deer blind in a deer-hunting area during deer hunting season.  He was dressed in blaze orange clothing.  He was armed with a shotgun loaded with deer slugs.  He was not in possession of a license to hunt deer.  He said that he didn’t need a license because hanging out in a deer blind was not “pursuing” game without a license, which is what the statute prohibits.

Actually, the statute, Minn.Stat. 97B.301, subd. 1 says that you can’t “take deer without a license.”  As lawyers are wont to do, “taking” is a defined term with a laundry list of meanings:  pursuing, shooting, killing, capturing, trapping, snaring, angling, spearing, netting, and attempting to do all those things.  Mr. Schmid’s pursuit of the meaning of “pursuing” was to say that it meant, when hunting deer, a foot chase, never mind that most likely very few, if any, humans can run long enough at forty miles an hour through thick and thicker after a deer – never mind about all that, he said hanging out in the deer blind didn’t count. 

On the way to rejecting this interpretation the court of appeals perused what is apparently seven centuries of the development of the “nuanced verb” of pursuing.  Thomas Jefferson said that we should “pursue” happiness.  Athletes “pursue” championships.  A “young romantic” – they don’t say anything about “not so young” romantics - “pursues” a mate.  A police officer “pursues” both her career and a suspect.  A game bird hunter pursues birds by having a dog flush the birds out in the open to be shot at by, one presumes, a stationary marksman.  Turkey hunters, it turns out, have their own “nuanced” pursuit of turkeys.  First you creep up on the flock, then run into the middle yelling and whooping.  The turkeys flee in pursuit of their lives.  The hunter then settles in to await their return so as to shoot them when they do.  And so on.

Mr. Schmid was “pursuing” deer.  Pay the fine.