- Idaho restricts hunting tech. New law affect the use of cellular trail cameras, drones, and thermals for hunting big game and upland birds for part of the year.
- Exceptions for predator management. Rules allow tech use for managing mountain lions, wolves, and recovering wounded game.
- These exceptions will make the law hard to enforce. Wolves and lions were originally included to make it easier to identify violators.
- Concerns over fair chase and accessibility. The final regs reflect debate over technology potentially favoring wealthier hunters and impacting wildlife conservation.
- Future regulations expected. Ongoing discussions to address enforcement and evolving technology in hunting.
Bottom line: Idaho’s new law limits hunting technology to promote ethical practices, with ongoing debates about fairness and enforcement.
Idaho is the latest state to ban trail cameras for certain hunting applications, thanks to a new law that goes into effect this summer. Gov. Brad Little signed House Bill 939 on April 2, marking the first regulation changes in a years-long effort to address the rise of hunting technology and its role in ethical hunting.
One key component of the new law is how it restricts modern hunting tech. From Aug. 30 through Dec. 31 each year, it’s illegal to use any of the following tech to hunt or scout big game and upland birds: transmitting trail cameras on federal, state, or local government lands, drones, thermal imaging, and night vision. It will still be legal to use cell cams for spring bear season.
Previously, Idaho hunting regulations did not address many of these issues, including the use of thermal imaging devices to hunt big game like elk and deer. Without specific restrictions on the books, hunting with that tech was legal. This bill rectifies that. HB 939 also puts more specific regulations on the books, including hunting from a helicopter and killing an animal with a gun “accessed and controlled via an internet connection.”
HB 939 is a looser version of the original bill, which called for tighter restrictions on hunting technology.
Concerns that such restrictions on trail cams and thermal imaging would lead to a dip in predator management resulted in exceptions for mountain lions, wolves, and other predators. The law also explicitly states these rules don’t apply to attempting to recover wounded game. (Monitoring traps, livestock, crops, and buildings on public lands is also allowed.)
The process to pass any form of this bill was a “saga” several years in the making, says Idaho Wildlife Federation executive director Nick Fasciano, with an extra “firestorm” that kicked off right before the finish line over the inclusion of wolves in the bill. Ultimately, lawmakers found common ground with the final version of the new law.
“We’re happy with it. It’s a good first step. It’s not going to be the last time we look at this,” says Fasciano. “Those enforceability concerns are legitimate. But how we deal with that without unduly impacting wolf harvest [will be a challenge].”
Fasciano notes that wolf numbers remain above the harvest goals set by Idaho Fish and Game, and this was a flash point within the hunting community as it sought to reach a consensus. So was disagreement over using technology for game recovery. There was less pushback on regs that were more in line with other states, such as banning thermals for deer and elk. All told, Idaho hunters generally favor restricting tech.
“Idaho was kind of the last state standing for a lot of this technology, in terms of being able to use thermals for big game, ungulates in particular,” says Fasciano. “This stuff has been moving pretty fast. Thermals are better and cheaper than they were. We have huge amounts of country in Idaho that does not have reception, so transmitting trail cameras weren’t all that much of a concern until Starlink. And so now, the idea that someone could blanket every pinch point in the Frank Church within a few miles of their wall tent and then know where they’re going in the morning? We don’t want to see things like that.”
While the ban on transmitting trail cams on public land was also divisive among Idaho hunters, there’s a reason it was included. Those Starlink-powered cell cams in a wilderness area are a real example, Fasciano says. Aside from the fair-chase concerns of close to real-time transmission, there’s also a threat to the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation — which calls for democratic access to wild game.
Related: Idaho Big-Game Hunters Would Ban Drones and Thermals, But Keep Most Other Tech
“That’s a concern a lot of us had in general: Does this [tech] turn things into a rich man’s game? Because not everyone can afford that,” says Fasciano. “This is one of those looking-down-the-road and seeing what could be coming issues … I don’t know how pervasive it is yet but you can definitely see a situation where it becomes more common. Giving an edge to the ability to afford 30 of those things isn’t really in line with the everyman vibe we like to have when it comes to hunting.”
Fasciano fully expects the regulations to evolve, especially to address enforcement concerns over game law violations related to thermals and drones when it comes to game recovery.
Still, the current bill aligns with the directive given to the Hunting and Advanced Technology Working Group, which was originally charged with focusing on ungulates as it evaluated potential hunting reg changes. Through HAT, Idaho tapped about two dozen hunters, conservationists, land managers, wildlife managers, and other stakeholders to make a unanimous recommendation on how to update Idaho’s hunting regs.
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“It’s worth acknowledging just how impressive it is to get twenty three hunters from different disciplines, from different parts of Idaho, to come to consensus on something like this,” says Fasciano. “Which is what the HAT Group did. You can’t get 23 hunters to agree on the color of the room. While there was certainly some controversy around this process, and probably some moves that were made that if we had to reset the board, would have been done differently … There was a problem that needed to be solved and that part of the process was impressive.”
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