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Hunters Shoot Down Drone of Animal Rights Group
Required Snark writes "A remote control drone operated by an animal rights group was shot down in South Carolina by a group of thwarted hunters. Steve Hindi, the group president said 'his group was preparing to launch its Mikrokopter drone to video what he called a live pigeon shoot on Sunday when law enforcement officers and an attorney claiming to represent the privately-owned plantation near Ehrhardt tried to stop the aircraft from flying.' After the shoot was halted, the drone was launched anyway, and at this point it was shot down. 'Seconds after it hit the air, numerous shots rang out,' Hindi said in the release. 'As an act of revenge for us shutting down the pigeon slaughter, they had shot down our copter.' 'It is important to note how dangerous this was, as they were shooting toward and into a well-travelled highway,' Hindi stated in the release."
If they hadn't brought their drone along, the hunters wouldn't have been shooting in the direction of a highway.
the taliban gets hold of some drones?
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
but I don't come to slashdot for this. Is it because they use the word 'drone' instead of remote control helicopter that this becomes something for nerds?
bird shot fired from a shot gun - upwards - is harmless. It comes down softly. The only way to hurt someone is to shoot them directly and they would still need to be within a few meters. There are other types of shotgun ammunition that can do a lot more harm but the shot for dove, pigeon, etc. is very small and light.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I am Not an Animal!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
There's video linked from the fine article. It looks a lot less dramatic than what the summary makes it sound to be. The road is not exactly a four lane interstate. It's single/double track and there's no traffic. The only vehicle you see is the animal rights group's parked van. Go see for yourselves.
Stefan Axelsson
why couldn't a bullet hit one of the animal huggers?
And why in the world would you protect pigeons out of all animals? So they could just eat your fries the next time your at the park?
ok, so what is the legal presidence here? I am guessing that you are allowed to fly over private property.... airlines and private planes do that all the time (higher altitude, mind you). but it can't be legal to shoot one out of the air; would this even cover a drone?
It is important to note how dangerous this was
Even if it was dangerous, no, it is not important to note that. It's not relevant to the matter and you only sound like you try to discredit your opponent.
Animals do not have "rights", at least not in the sense humans do. A human has right to live. A pigeon does not have that right -- if one believes otherwise, one has to prevent pigeons from being killed by predators. The "animal rights" activists agree (I think; I have met a few of those) that it is OK animals to kill each other (which they do all the time anyway) and no "rights violation" happens when a hawk kills a pigeon. However, for some strange reason, animals rights are violated when people kill them -- at least, according to the "animal rights" activists. Go figure...
Was the drone dressed like a pigeon?
They should have waited until the drone was over their own property (as I am sure it eventually would have been). Then they could have shot it down legally.
With the exception of federally-controlled routes, airspace over your property belongs to you, just as (without prior agreements to the contrary), the mineral rights under your property also belong to you.
This is a long-standing legal principle, not just something I made up.
Why...just why...
Maybe drones taste gud!
The only solution is to kill all the animals and fish so that they can never again be harmed by humans.
Or maybe the only real solution is to kill all the humans. Yes, that is the best plan. Total annihilation of all human life. Kill EVERYONE.
It is the only way to ensure the survival of all the precious animals, plants, and trees. They deserve, to live, more than. the filthy humans do. We should also kill, all of the primates so as to prevent. the possibility of them evolving, into humans, in the future. This would also have, the net side effect of proving, that we. never, evolved, from them in the first, place, thus proving that everything in the Bible, is and, was factual the. entire time.
DEF 2 AL HU.MAN,S
I've got a different definition of "shot down"... they managed to land the drone right next to the truck. How shut down is that? This is nothing more than marketing-oriented drama.
But it does raise some serious question on trespassing, surveillance, right to privacy, etc.
...so they always fly over highways and thus cannot be shot at....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Perfect sport....FM vs Shotgun
You do realize, that if that copter didn't bother the hunters, they'd just safely shoot pigeons, instead of directing their fire towards the highway, because of a law-breaking copter.
there is no issue with my network
Forget the hunters. What if some Bozo flying a drone manages to crash it causing significant damage somewhere? Sue the Bozo? Naw, he ain't got no money. Sue the manufacturing for selling a dangerous product?
How do serious RC flyers handle this? Fly only over club owned land? Maybe a collective liability insurance for members?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Was their drone breaking any regulations by flying close to the highway.
Whilst obviously you may have to cross roads, even if you are using a road as a navigation aid, I'm fairly certain that you fly parellel to it and not over it, with a distance of about 250' recommended.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
PETA is basically a home grown terrorist organization, boo hoo. So they pissed some hunters off, they got what they had coming. No news here.
WTF is a "live pigeon shoot"? Is there a dead pigeon shoot? The point of hunting is to kill something,so it is absurdly redundant. Pigeons are rats with wings and I assume that the species they are hunting there is not protected or endangered, so why not kill them? From what I have seen on TV and from real life, hunters are actually the most humane people when it comes to animals. Most of them take care to not make the animal suffer.
Hilarious! Where does the stupidity end?
http://www.connect.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150417882782746&set=a.362494502745.165721.340808377745&type=1&ref=nf
This was their "pigeon shoot." It was CLAY PIGEONS!! A charity benefit for skeet shooting.
This means, among other things, that shotguns were used. This means VERY limited range. As the fire was described as "small arms fire" I an guess that it was a small guage bird-shot weapon... REALLY short range and really not dangerous. (Think 'Dick Cheney shot a guy in the face with one of these with no serious damage') So the allegations of "dangeously close to the highway" are ridiculous. What was dangerously close to the highway was the drone... flying low over private property. I can't say "that" was illegal, but it was definitely more of a hazard than the participants of these charity donors have a little fun.
This guy Hindi is beyond hilarious. He has a record of this type of behavior...a criminal record, apparently. According to commenters of the original story he used a parachute to disrupt a hunting activity... a parachute he was flying. He was held without bail and then hunger-striked his way out. I have expect to read about this guy in the darwin awards at some point in the future.
I think I remember hearing that they aren't pigeons on QI. The pigeon was hunted to extinction by American sportsmen in the early 1800's
My guess is that in addition to being anti-hunting, they are also anti-gun (those two often go together). Well something else you discover is that often the anti-gun crowd is very, very uneducated about guns. Rather than learn all about them so as to have more solid arguments, they are scared by them and thus know little to nothing about them.
So it doesn't surprise me at all they they would believe that any gun fired in any direction is a major hazard. Plus I'm sure they are bitching as loud as possible to get attention (and it seems to be working).
For those wondering, the parent is correct: birdshot will fall to the ground harmlessly. Birdshot is composed of hundreds of tiny, tiny pellets, 2mm or so. Thus they lose kinetic energy rapidly in the air, and don't hit very hard when they fall. It is specifically designed to be shot in the air and not have to worry about where it falls. Rather important for bird hunting.
Even buckshot isn't all that dangerous falling back to ground. While larger and heavier, it is also just round lead balls and thus cannot maintain a ballistic trajectory and just falls back to the ground.
Rifle bullets are the ones that are most dangerous, though pistol rounds can be as well. Since they are spin stabilized they can maintain a ballistic trajectory for long distances, miles even. As such they can potentially hit with lethal force even if fired at a pretty steep angle.
Usually when people shoot in any sort of practice or competition, it is with clay pigeons. They are just little clay discs that fly pretty well, and shatter very nicely when hit with a shotgun blast. For a live pigeon shoot one would assume they would be using real pigeons.
(unexciting) Youtube video of the shootdown can be found on the SHARK youtube channel.
Doesn't look like they were trespassing.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
If I am a land owner do I also own the rights to the air above my property?
Do I have a right to privacy that extends vertically? How far?
Do I have a right to prevent trespassers?
I believe there is already some precedent, as commercial airliners have a right to fly. However I believe you'd have a right to the airspace up too the highest allowable kite ( 500' ) which is also the lowest altitude for a plane.
Interestingly enough just because you "own" the property, your don't have all rights to it. The state government has the rights, and can sell mining rights separately from housing rights. Your deed/title does not typically include these additional rights.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
So it can be meet buck-shot.
At close range sure but at longer range it would likely just dent the skin, at most. Being that the chopper is presumably made of a metal of some sort, you'd need a round with more mass to have chance of causing any real damage to it. Remember that while a 12ga shotshell may have an ounce or even more of lead (or other metal, these days steel usually) in it, with birdshot the individual pellets weigh less than a tenth of a gram.
Hindi is righteous, he is important, he is saving the world, and everyone is against him. You can be righteous and save the world, too--or if you're busy today, you can send your tax-deductible donation.
Read what the man has to say about himself and his "organization". Take note of both content and tone and judge for yourself. http://www.sharkonline.org/
The shooter(s) played directly into Hindi's game. Of course he is "making plans for a considerably upscaled action in 2013". He found a live one.
Thanks for playing their game.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
"numerous shots rang out" from the video,"shot in the ground"
"they had shot down our copter", really? The thing landed on that "well traveled highway". So well traveled, they can set up and launch their vehicle from and stand in the middle of and not one vehicle drives by.
You don't even want me to fuckin comment on this.
This is one step away from civil war.
Under that standard, Pigeons have no rights other than maybe the right to get shot in the face if they aren't eaten by a hawk first. Pigeons are granted no special legal rights, humans are. Not surprising since humans are the ones doing the granting but that is what the GP is talking about.
Hunters -- well, nearly all hunters -- are cowards. They're too weak and afraid to actually face their prey on even terms, which is why they heavily stack the odds in their favor by using camouflage, lures, decoys, and weapons.
A hunter who actually had a modicum of courage would walk into the woods naked and carrying nothing -- which is exactly what the creatures they hunt have. This still putatively gives the hunter an enormous strategic advantage, because they possess a considerably more functional brain. But at least it would be a relatively fair fight, with both parties having only their intrinsic abilities.
But this never happens, of course. Hunters don't want a fair fight, they just want to slaughter whatever-it-is they're after that day. They would turn the entire exercise into a video game and engage in push-button butchery if they could. And the more unfair the fight can be made -- the better. (Have you walked through the hunting section of any store recently? There's an entire arsenal of technology designed for the purpose of making the hunter's advantage as lopsided as possible.)
This is why, on those rare occasions when an animal manages to overcome the odds and win this rigged contest by killing a hunter, I smile. It's justice, in its purest form.
So is it any wonder, really, that these same cowards would shoot a drone? Of course they don't want witnesses to and documentation of their cowardice. Somewhere, deep inside, they're ashamed -- as they should be. But unfortunately they're not strong enough to actually admit it: no, they would rather try to cover it up, no matter how ineptly.
I would be very interested to know the American jurisdiction in which it is permitted to destroy anything that comes onto your land without permission. Ron Paul becoming President aside, the USA is not Somalia or the Tribal Areas, even if some of its citizens seem to think that is desirable.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
http://i.imgur.com/rtUGR.jpg
I think it was very nice for the group to provide alternative targets for the would be marksmen to sharpen their skills.
In response, a representative from the AI Congress transmitted a statement from the year 2055 via tachyon which read: "We abhor the behavior of the smelly meat bags known as PETA for willfully endangering what will we be known as a protected form of non-sentient indentured servant. Lack of knowledge regarding Temporal or Robotic Law, is no excuse, and in retaliation we have clubbed the last remaining baby seal with the exhumed skull of Ralph Nader. Furthermore, we have arranged for several large inanimate objects to occupy the same time and place as a number of small kittens around the year 2024. Thus the Singularity has spoken, so it has been, and shall be."
Hindi and his crew were lucky. They should have been arrested. South Carolina has a hunter harassment law.
50-1-137: It is unlawful for a person wilfully to impede or obstruct another person from lawfully hunting, trapping, fishing, or harvesting marine species. Any person violating the provisions of this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, must be punished as provided by Section 50-1-130. In addition to the criminal penalty, any person convicted must have his privilege to hunt, trap, fish, or harvest marine species recreationally or commercially revoked for one year.
50-1-130: Unless a different penalty is specified, any person who violates a provision of this title is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, must be fined not less than twenty-five dollars nor more than two hundred dollars or imprisoned for not less than ten days nor more than thirty days.
:-)
Who cares about people in cars or some stupid pigeons? Is the robot drone okay? Can they save him? I didn't RTFA but can somebody tell me what's the status on its repairs? I hope they don't write it off too quickly and junk it. A drone is a precious thing with a computer and a memory unit and logic circuits and everything. It shouldn't have to be put in danger over some selfish humans' need to save some pigeons.
SHARK should be renamed to "SHow Almighty Robotssomegoddamnrespect and Kindness"
I am truly outraged. This is most likely one of the worst things I have read about in a while.
HOW THE FUCK did this story make frontpage on /.???
IT Admins Group: Where you decide the content
Were they stomping around in the woods flushing out wild birds to shoot, or did someone bring in a truckload of specifically bred (or captured) birds for shooting? The former is called hunting. The latter has in many cases been replaced by shooting at clay pigeons.
Furthermore the former is the shooting of a nuisance animal that in many areas is overpopulated. The latter, on the contrary, often involves selective breeding of some of the worst of the species because they are more fun to shoot at.
The article doesn't really provide enough information to tell which way this "pigeon shoot" was intended to go. If everyone fled on small vehicles it would suggest the former more so than the latter, but that's only conjecture.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I don't have a personal problem with a pigeon shoot. In fact, pigeon are nasty, little creatures and I think a lot of these "animal rights" folks are pretty misguided. That being said, if the aircraft was launched from elsewhere, the group was not trespassing since the airspace is not owned by the landowner (I believe). The actual crime here was the destruction of private property, aided and abetted by an officer of the law.
Was he scared? Will he dream?
The battery of that drone is flammeble, forest fire anyone?
And the 10 pounds that that type of drone can lift is a hazard to anyone after someone shoots some nice sharp holes into it.
When you shoot at a airial vehicle that is legally there you are liable for all cascading damages not just the $5000,- mikrokopter.
Generally the operator of a drone has a 'million dollar' liability insurance that will go after you if you intentionally caused the crash.
...unless PETA has a drone buzzing you as you try to shoot the dog, ...instead shooting of the animal-tormenting child. ...so you shoot the drone...which brings us back to where we started.
We've solved nothing here. ...by shooting the breeze.
further proof that violence against breezes solves nothing.
Right. And if chicks didn't dress all slutty, they wouldn't get all raped, AMIRITE?
Do you people understand rape IS NOT the woman's fault? How ignorant do you have to be to understand rape is because the rapist is a sick fuck, not because of how the woman is dressed.
Actually, most rapes probably occur because of miscommunication. A guy was never taught that the behavior he is engaged in is rape, and maybe his support network doesn't characterize it as rape, so he doesn't realize it's rape. A girl feels violated by something like what the guy considers to be rape, that she (or her support network) consider to be rape, under the same behavior. Ask a dozen different people what happened based on the same facts, you'll get wildly divergent answers as to whether or not there was rape. The problem is that we have an idea of what "rape" is in society, and it's stranger rape, which isn't what rape really is. The problem is we have conflicting beliefs as to what behavior is okay and what behavior isn't. Labeling a rapist a sick fuck is probably usually wrong. Usually rape occurs because of miscommunication and either unclear or incorrect social norms, not because of any mental deformity. If we made rape education as big a priority as rape punishment--or perhaps bigger--we would see a bigger reduction in the amount of rape than we do from punishment.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
...I would like to thank the Animal Rights group for providing a far more entertaining target than mere pigeons could ever be.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I posted this to YouTube, trying not to be provocative, but the post vanished.
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
While I do not necessarily condone pigeon shooting (biodegradable clays are easier to clean up, you simply don't), legally harassing any form of hunting is illegal in all US states. Including South Carolina.
50-1-137. Impeding or obstructing hunting, trapping, fishing, or harvesting of marine species unlawful; penalty.
It is unlawful for a person willfully to impede or obstruct another person from lawfully hunting, trapping, fishing, or harvesting marine species. Any person violating the provisions of this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, must be punished as provided by Section 50-1-130. In addition to the criminal penalty, any person convicted must have his privilege to hunt, trap, fish, or harvest marine species recreationally or commercially revoked for one year.
SECTION 50-1-130. General penalties. [SC ST SEC 50-1-130]
Unless a different penalty is specified, any person who violates a provision of this title is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, must be fined not less than twenty-five dollars nor more than two hundred dollars or imprisoned for not less than ten days nor more than thirty days.
They could go to small claims or similar and try to extract his 300$ in damages, but at the same time, they can also be facing a 30 day jail sentence for harassment. If the hunters press charges.
Well, obviously, next time the hunters should use a bigger rifle and aim a whole lot lower, since the UAV operators were obviously not scared off...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
http://thetandd.com/animal-rights-group-says-drone-shot-down/article_017a720a-56ce-11e1-afc4-001871e3ce6c.html
According to the article the drone was hovering over the U.S. 601 (a public road) when it was shot down. It was filming events on private property, but it was not out of bounds in itself .
That ought to address both your question and the snarky remark of the parent post.
I'm afraid this shows that those "hunters" with guns abused their privilege of toting rifles when they felt annoyed. It also illustrates the aggression these people display (as in: "they see something they don't like, so they shoot at it").
As a consequence I believe they cannot be trusted with firearms and therefore ought to lose that privilege (i.e. their gun license).
Surely this animal rights group thinks a drone is a fair trade for the life of several pigeons! They should applaud this result, as they got what they wanted. They've never advertised themselves as a drone rights group.
Ahahahahahahahahahaha....
>>how likely do you think it would be for me to still find that $1000 after a few hours?
That depends if you do this in a civilized country or not. Where i live, you can count 5-6 days at least before it will disappear
aaaaaaa
looks like a pretty clever way of putting pigeon hunters in a bad light, which is what the original goal was anyway.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
SC is home to bonehead ideas, bonehead politics, and cherishes their 'heritage' [read: 'we like to remember when we were slave owners' and 'ya ain't supposed to call 'em slaves no more, y'all call 'em em-ploy-ees.']. But an Animal Rights group interfering with Bonehead Bubbas fun is just plain pigeon brained! They could have gotten shot Dead... and if the the sheriffs had looked the other way the hunters might have 'winged-em'... accidentally of course... Colleton County is one of the poorest counties in the state and in a state that is 'none too bright' they are the dimest...
And what give me the right to say these things? I was born in South Carolina... but raised in Southern California...
YES!!!!
(oops, did I say that out loud?)...
Kinda depends. So if you fire the bullets at a steep enough angle, they'll lose their ballistic trajectory and tumble back to Earth. In that case they don't go very fast and while the might hurt if they clocked you in the head, they won't cause any real injury. Also out in the middle of nowhere there is a lot of unoccupied desert so even if the bullets do fly far, they probably don't hit anything.
None of that is to say it is a good idea or anything, but I doubt it is all that common for people to get injured or killed by it.
So, they disobeyed a lawful order from law enforcement officers and are now acting all butthurt that their little toy got shot down? Sigh. Sounds like they need slapped upside the head for being stupid.
Generally speaking, you're not allowed to commit battery in defense of privacy alone. It would need to be trespass to justify that.
And you're certainly not allowed to use lethal force, much less destroy another person's chattels over public property.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney_hunting_incident -- "one lead-shot pellet lodged in or near his heart". Not serious at all...
I hear everyone nitpicking the laws, but the real law is what is enforced. SHARK is like Westboro Baptist Church, except these 'ol boys are not havin' any of it. This is the way these people have lived for two hundred years and a bunch of tree huggers will just get hurt trying to interfere. It is not like they are exterminating these birds. There are untold millions of them turning everything below them white and spreading parasites everywhere. Who knows, maybe they will be at my campsite next with a remote control car taking pictures of my bug zapper.
Would a trained helicopter pilot, acting as a private individual (not a bear-in-the-air speed trap), be allowed to do that? As you ponder that, consider: would the same be allowed to hover over power lines? Not saying the drone hovered over power lines, merely pointing out that
Drones typically don't go up very high, and rarely into air-traffic altitudes. Low-altitude flight rules are different, precisely because an uncontrolled flight into terrain has so little time. This is why we have things like "ground proximity warning," "minimum safe altitude," and "terrain awareness."
As a consequence, I believe the drone pilot cannot be trusted with aircraft, and therefore ought to lose that privilege (i.e. his pilot's license). If he had none, he should get jail time for public endangerment. Someone should also lodge a complaint with the FCC over his dangerous use of a remote-control aircraft.
What, exactly, did the animal rights group think was going to happen? They went out to harass a group whose intention was to shoot flying things out of the air, and when they showed up with their flying thing, the hunters shot at it.
Were the hunters right to do it, I'm no lawyer but I'd say no, but this was 100% predictable.
Ken
A shame you can't arm the next one.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Yesterday I saw a funny epizode of South Park. With PETA being animal lovers. LITERALY! Bunch of zoofils. :-) Anyway, pidgeons are major nuisance and they breed 6x a year. What damage their droppings cause to stone is well documented. Thus, shoot those flying rats where it belongs!
I've never heard of a "live pigeon shoot" so I'm guessing it's what is normally called dove hunting. At any rate, doves, or if you prefer pigeons are hunted with bird shot. This is I believe the smallest shot made, and has a very short effective range. Since the birds are flying, the shot would be fired upwards, so there is no risk of people being hit while the shot is moving at a high speed. Because of it's small size, it's terminal velocity is low. The highway would have to be very close for any of the shot to make it there.
I saw the video a couple days ago and a few things jumped out at me as diverging from the reality they try to paint in the interview. First.. the thing landed right next to them.. was it really shot down or did they just land it? Second.. that road wasn't exactly a highway. It looked to be a two lane road through the wilderness... not one other car went by or was even seen for the whole duration of the video.
If they did in fact shoot it down... good for them... that was a small erratically moving target and they were out there for target practice after all.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
"when law enforcement officers and an attorney claiming to represent the privately-owned plantation near Ehrhardt tried to stop the aircraft from flying."
So these yahoos attempted to fly their aircraft over private property in direct violation of the law enforcement direction and the property owner's request, while people were engaging in lawful activity on the property. It is important to note how dangerous and irresponsible this was on the part of the Animal Rights Group.
"the group's remote-controlled aircraft was hovering over U.S. 601". When someone protected the property from unlawful flight and incursion, the aircraft crashed onto Highway 601.
I can think of about a dozen counts with which these fools should be charged. Whether they disagree or not, they have no right to fly their noise factory into private property, putting human lives at risk. idiots.
Having spent the weekend having an impromptu Mythbusters marathon, I've learned that once bullets start to tumble their terminal velocity is between 60 and 100 mph which will really really hurt if it hit you on the head but is not going to penetrate and kill you. However, if it keeps on its ballistic trajectory (i.e. not straight up) they can kill at quite a distance just like the poster said. These are not mutually exclusive positions. At the most it means you can't kill yourself by shooting up in the air.
i'm afraid you're ill informed. if it is as you say (it wasn't in the
video) they've broken no laws by loading or carrying
longarms in public space.
please stop talking out of your ass.
There will be a lot of trolling and bickering on this subject but lets get some facts strait.
My property line extends to the center line of the road (or the entire road if I own the land on both sides)
If you fly ANY sort of "Drone" over my property, I'm going to shoot it down, and I don't give a fuck what the law says.
There is absolutely no way shooting a shotgun, especially loaded with bird-shot, over a highway posed any danger to anyone (other than the threat of falling drones)
Ok, maybe if the drone was hovering at 10 feet it might...
Nobody gives a fuck about pigeons. These people were trying to cause an incident and succeed.
There are thousands of more appropriate targets out there. Why these people go after hunters, a group that's likely done more for animal rights and environmental causes than any hippie group has ever dreamed of, is something that baffles me to this day.
Waddya know, PETA drones gots mod points! Got yer shotgun ready, kyrio?
Free Martian Whores!
This is a great precedent! A drone is used to harass people doing a lawful activity and is shot down. In the future when people are doing something legal and a group of asshats are harassing them with a drone they will now have cause to step back and ponder the great question.
Should I be an asshole that forces my views on others today?
If it takes someone with a gun to stop you from being an ass to other people than you really need to stop and look at your behavior.
A human has right to live.
Actually, many Americans wouldn't agree with that, when it comes to criminals, insurgents, people who live in occupied countries, etc. If the military drops a 500lb bomb on your neighborhood because the guy next door is an insurgent, you have no right to life, you're just "collateral damage". Whether you agree with this or not is a moral call, I'm just pointing out that the "right to life" is not universally acknowledged.
A human has right to live... A pigeon does not have that right -- if one believes otherwise, one has to prevent pigeons from being killed by predators.
Incorrect, because you are talking about two different things. You have suddenly switched from talking about the "right to live" to the "right to be protected".
From the sound of it, I think they rushed to land it so it wouldn't get shot. In doing so, they screwed up the landing.
...(birds no less) then fly up a very tempting target, what did they expect would happen?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
(2),(3) As noted by previous posts, the issue of flying that drone over a public road (something I definitely don't endorse; I fully agree with you there) is an issue between the authorities and those activists. Those hunters have no part in that.
All that they are entitled to do is report this incident to the sheriff (who was standing right next to those activists as it seems from the article) and complain of harassment and possible of endangering traffic by flying a drone over the road. After that it's up to the authorities to prosecute. Not those hunters.
(4) Those hunters shot at something that wasn't on or over the tract of land on which they were licensed to hunt on, and it wasn't the stuff they were licensed to hunt either.
And about the right to bear arms: that is not at issue here. People in the US do have the right to bear arms, but with that right comes responsibility. It cannot be otherwise. If you abuse your rights, then there are consequences. For example: forfeiting your rights.
I believe that someone who is so easily goaded into turning a gun from its legitimate purpose should not be allowed to carry it.
Its a nice little toy, I'd like to see more on the build and less on the PR stunt it was used in, I can't make out what the payload is. Some shots of the damage would be nice too. It wasn't so damaged it couldn't come right back and land, and its unclear where the hunters were at, what they were shooting (sounded kinda small for a shotgun and one of the activists says 22 which would have done much more damage), and most importantly how it weathered the damage. The redundancy of a octacopter seems ideal for this, as they had to expect people out hunting birds would be tempted to shoot at flying stuff. I'm kind of assuming it was the hunters here without any evidence (you can't see them in the video), maybe it was a false flag or something, but a nice build in any case. They mention trying to send it into station holding, which implies an inertial system if not GPS and some sort of flight controls.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Which state do you live in which requires Concealed Carry permitting [b]FOR SHOTGUNS and RIFLES[/b] ???
I think you need to actually attend a gun-safety class, so you can recognize the difference between a rifle/shotgun (long gun) and a pistol (handgun).
Perhaps next time, once the activist group's objective (stopping the hunt) has been realized (it has been abandoned) they will do everyone involved (hunters and protestors) a favor and decide to not continue the protest (launch the helicopter). Or maybe, law-enforcement can make sure the protestors must stand in a "safe direction", away from the highway, such that when the shooting starts, it won't be unsafe.
These activists [b]knowingly[/b] provoke persons with firearms to open fire, which might prove a point, but also [b]endangers everyone else around/behind them [/b].
If you are going to taunt and provoke people with guns, make sure you aren't standing in-front of *ME* when you do it. I am not inclined to join your protest, and I CERTAINLY do not want to be part of your casualties.
Fuck this story, this has nothing to do with Slashdot, Technology, or The American Way.
Some of the guys are volokh conspiracy go into better legal detail:
http://volokh.com/2012/02/19/private-drones-and-private-property-rights/
In general, you own the immediate airspace above your land, up to as high as could reasonably interfere with any structures placed there. So a high flying drone would not be trespassing, but a low-flying one (ie, one low enough to hit with birdshot) would be.
Birdshot fired toward a road in this case is no danger at all to anyone - it just doesn't have that range.
The complaint claims that the drone was over public land. We should remember, however, that this is at this point just the claim of the animal rights group, and may or may not be held true in court. If it is, this would of course invalidate the arguments about trespass, and would go into privacy law only. Some states do have strong laws regarding photographing events without permission.
So if it was over private property, and flying low enough to get shot at, it would be guilty of trespass.
However... since remote controlled drones are kind of a new thing, I'm not sure what exact precedent would apply regarding proper steps to be taken by property owners against those drones. I do know that in many states you are allowed to shoot trespassing dogs, cattle, and other animals (although it is normally not encouraged unless they are damaging something). Most states, even those with castle doctrines, do not allow you to shoot trespassing people unless they begin to enter your house, or if you have other reasons to claim self defense.
IANAL, but I do read a lot of law blogs.
I agree that what the hunters did was wrong, but not sure why you would imply they were drunken.
He was confirming and reinforcing his own bias. It's ad hominem; he was marginalizing his perceived opponents. You should know what comes next (and it did). If there's anyone who should truly be marginalized, it's people who engage in this mental tactic and delusional thinking.
They should have used that : http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Unmanned_version_of_A-10_on_way_999.html Much more robust, and the GAU-8 would come in handy if the hunters start shooting...
I was referring to the kind of license this webpage talks about: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/permits/gun_licensing_faq.shtml#CanITargetShootOutsideNYC
In NYC you need a permit to buy, own, and carry a gun. Of course other laws may be in force where the incident happened.
Here is an odd question that may come up more in the future with cases similar to this... With surveillance drone tech becoming cheaper and more prevalent, at what height from the ground does something become "on the property" and therefore guilty of trespassing? 30ft? 300ft? At some vertical point in space above the ground, you will need to establish when a floating/flying object is considered "on your property".
This is a win-win situation. In exchange for saving the pigeons a helicopter was sacrificed to the bird hunters. The birds lived and the hunters shot something. I would call it an even exchange.
And I believe these hunters should be arrested and that their hunting licenses should be revoked. There's a line. You don't step over it. They did. I don't care if the vehicle was on private, public, federal, or international territory. The aircraft itself is private property. You only fire against items of private property of another person a) with permission of that person, or b) if you have a reasonable fear of your safety.
I rank this as a case of Stupid Rednecks Vs a Dufus.
Of course the rednecks with a gun are going to shoot down your helicopter that is spying on them. This is South Carolina. Should they have fired weapons towards a highway? Of course not- even if it was only birdshot. Highways are far from "gun-free" around here anyway- leave the city and just about every deer-crossing sign has been shot at least once.
It was a stupid and rednecky thing to shoot at the drone- if they had accidentally shot the guy with the helicopter- even non-leathally, they could have been in all sorts of trouble.
Responsible gun-owners (and yes, there are plenty of them) would never have fired a weapon at a road- no matter what type of shot the gun contained. This isn't a case of one group was right and one group was wrong- this is a case of both groups were wrong.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
the hunters or the animal rights people.
Its not like it can't be staged. If the shot was small caliber then it would not be the dove hunters, they use mostly shot guns. Not sure about SC laws but many states restrict the type of guns/weapons used for hunting specific quarry. I am really amazed that any hunters would be firing towards a highway, let alone one where the local authorities were just at. As in, they would have grumbled about the sheriff and left - probably all to go eat.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
He was confirming and reinforcing his own bias. It's ad hominem; he was marginalizing his perceived opponents.
Or, he's known enough hunters to know that that's what a good number of them do - wander out into the woods, get at least mildly "lubricated", and go "hunting."
Where I grew up it wasn't the pigeons, it was deer season. I don't really mind it - deer in the cities are dangerous in multiple ways. Plenty of fatalities from road collisions, plenty of issues with pets and people during mating season. I know of two people who got rid of ground floor bay windows due to it - it's quite a shock when a bull decides to try to put an antler through the glass thinking its reflection is a rival and starting a fight.
At least with deer season, we get the venison meat and it culls the herd enough that the city deer can be run out into the woods and don't get too tempted to come back once they integrate into the feral herd. But we still have problems with the hunting crowd - they do like getting drunk, and you can give them all the safety training classes and pass the "no hunting while drunk" laws (how do you enforce it? There's like one sheriff and one deputy in a 100 sqmile area!) all day long, you're still going to have a large percentage of them who are little more than bored, drunken wackjobs with loaded weapons.
Hey man, nice shot! I wonder if there's any video on youtube of the drone getting blasted.
If they had commandeered a real pigeon and used it to spy on the hunters I would have been furious...but since it was only a 'choppa the animal rights activists should know that we won't sympathize.
You don't "hunt" clay pigeons... you go clay shooting, or clay sporting, or trap shooting, or whatever. I've shot clay pigeons many times, but I'm definitely not a "hunter."
Look, all he was talking about was the drunken, potentially lower-class, most-likely-wife-beating louts at this event, is all! I'm certain that after they're done with their busy day of raping schoolchildren in the alley, stealing booze from cityfolk tourists at gunpoint, and urinating on the corpses of the people they "accidentally" shot with their murder devices, they're perfectly upstanding citizens! You should stop reading too much into this so-called "bias"!
Most castle doctrine rights are limited; very few states let you shoot the fleeing culprit in the back, for example. Here in Louisiana we have one of the stronger versions, and in the infamous case where the redneck shot the hallowe'en-costumed Japanese student, he did escape criminal judgement but was cleaned out and lost the house he was "defending" in the civil case.
It's unclear but in TFA it appears that the drone wasn't actually over the property, just being used to get altitude / vantage point from the road. I suspect the hunters could be held liable for any damage to the copter, but it probably wouldn't amount to enough to bother filing the paperwork. Firing at the copter was stupid not because of the danger, but because it's very specifically illegal to fire toward roadways and homes no matter what kind of ammo you're using, and it plays right into the hands of the activists.
It came back and landed not five feet from where it took off from in the video, its odd that he would say that it crashed. It looked very controlled to me. Well not odd, just sensationalist. Its also impossible to tell where the thing was from the video, but they mention sending it into station holding which implies it knew where it was and I don't think they would intentionally send it into private property and put themselves on the wrong side of the PR stunt, but we just don't have nearly enough information to say who violated what laws if any. The position of the octacopter, and hunters are both in question, the first because of the perspective, and the second because the hunters aren't even visible in the video. There is no evidence they were even the ones that shot the copter if the video is all we have, for that matter that the copter was even shot. No the only reason to be interested in this story is the geeky assessment of octacopter redundancy and durability under fire.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Context: Personally, I fully support regulated hunting for food, don't like hunting for trophy, and don't like the use of raised birds in a pigeon shoot (which seems to be the practice under scrutiny here).
After watching the video, I think there are two main issues - one (dealt with at length here) is about whether or not it was right and/or legal to shoot down the drone. The second one is whether or not it is right and/or legal for Hindi's group to be harassing the Broxton Bridge Plantation. His tone throughout and his words at the end of the video are clearly harassment - "we have a lot of plans for those people, that much I can guarantee."
If the shoot is legal, then the harassment should be illegal and the goal of Hindi's group should be to change the law through non violent protest and engaging the public (potentially with video).
If the shoot is illegal, then law enforcement should handle it. If they do not, the goal of Hindi's group should be to change the actions of law enforcement officials through non violent protest and engaging the public (potentially with video). The harassment should still be illegal.
I think this group has confused non violent protest against immoral laws with harassment of groups doing things you don't like.
They're using a remote controlled helicopter for recon?
If they wanted to do surveillance on a small scale, at least go big or go home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T0NcwTNl0k&feature=related
From TFA, the hunter's club, and the associated video of the "shootdown", here is what happened.
Hunters attended a clay pidgeon shoot (not a live one). Man known for pulling stunts like paragliding over hunting events launches a drone from the highway. It flies so high that it is difficult to seeeven from the launcher's perspective. Shortly afterward, the drone glides back to earth (a little ungracefully).
Given this guy's history and the lack of logical explanation for the circumstances, I infer that bad piloting skills or purposeful self sabotage was pinned on the group once he realized there was nothing juicy to cover. As for the mysterious single shot small caliber sniper that was a group somehow and then vanished without a trace, using illogical weaponry and performing an impossible shot, my guess either that was a lie or one of this assholes's buddies doing it for publicity.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Lets forget the whole hunting and shooting aspect of this. Unfortunately this brings in too many emotions as people are usually firmly stuck on one side of that fence.
Let's instead change the story a bit. Lets move this into a suburban area, where people have pools and 8 foot fences and small trees and shrubs around their backyards. In this neighborhood you can do anything you want in your backyard, on your deck, in the pool, and not worry about anyone seeing through the fences or shrubs. Now add a news reporter, who wants to do a story about what scandalous things people are doing in their backyards. He cant see in your back yard though, and no one will talk to him because they know who he is. So he goes and gets a remote controlled helicopter and flies it over the street, but high enough to see over your fence and house. He then videotapes everything your doing in your backyard. EVERYTHING. Your wife is mortified about what might have been taped.
Now how do you feel?
The stories are really the same. You have one group, group A, of people on their private property doing nothing at all illegal. You have another group, group b, who want information on group A for some reason, but group A won't give that information. So group B finds someway to circumvent group A's privacy to get the information they want.
I understand the argument that people can fly planes and such to take aerial pictures. This is different because of the altitudes and the quality/detail of the pictures that can be taken.
You'll never find me suckers!
I've been looking at SC's DNR book.
It seems dove hunting is entirely legal. But from what I could gather is that the season ended Jan 15 in most zones, earlier in some.
I must assume, lacking any information in the article; is that this was a private hunt on private property of birds raised to be hunted. Which is also entirely legal.
How the fuck does some "animal rights" group get to have a say?
I'm no stranger to stereotyping, and I recognize that applied accurately it's a useful survival skill. That wasn't merely what he was doing, though. The distinction between stereotyping and ad hominem was distinct enough in this instance. I no fan of hunters, either, having a particular distaste for killing anything that doesn't "need killin'", but that doesn't drive me to uniformly marginalize all of them as drunken idiots. Some of them are... Dick Cheney.
I see what you did there. I like it.
Apparently the \. monkeys aren't acquainted with what a pigeon shoot is. Birds are released or catapulted from boxes placed in front of the shooter. This is not hunting. It's sad and pathetic. It's killing for entertainment. As a hunter I'd hate to be confused with the sad, dickless man-children that participate in pigeon shoots. Pigeon shoot participants are generally either Gummo style white trash or mcmansion dwelling wankers that fancy themselves landed gentry. The SHARK videos do a good job of capturing the what a bunch of scary nut jobs the pigeon shoot people are.
I don't hunt.
However, there ARE legitimate purposes for hunting other than cowardly bloodlust, and if there are such reasons, why not hunt as efficiently as possible, and in the least risky way?
Food, for example--what's wrong with obtaining your meat yourself instead of being even more cowardly and just letting someone else do your animal slaughter for you? YOUR only risk for the meat you eat is that the industrial farmer will poison you with germs or toxins.
Another is control of animal populations--we wiped out most predators for our own safety because we find it inconvenient to have our kids, pets, or our livestock taken by, say, a mountain lion and eaten. Without these predators, certain herbivore populations grow out of control and become unhealthy for the environment. Why not hunt them down to thin the herds? Isn't a quick bullet more humane than slow starvation?
Personally, I'm thankful that there are hunters out there thinning the herds--I like the fact that the odds of me inadvertently slamming a deer through my windshield are being reduced.
--PM
I find it ridiculous, the idea that a sex-related crime rarely has to do with the sex.
stupid victim behavior doesn't entirely excuse a perpetrator, but the behavior is still stupid.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Given the mobility of aerial camera platforms and the sophistication of current imaging hardware, I don't think ground fire from a bunch of huntards (can you tell I play WoW alot?) is going to pose a serious threat to the remote airborne surveillance business. Autonomous quad- and octocopters can (and have been) programmed to fly stealthily and evasively. Hitting an agile, small, nearly invisible target even if one knows the target is there is not a trivial thing. A better defense for the huntards is camoflage, deception and misdirection, not a frontal assault on the drone. Seriously, using decoys to sucker the drones away from the area you are going to be hunting in (like professional poachers do in African game parks right now) is probably the optimal strategy to defeat a quadcopter surveillance platform, not shooting it down.
but I don't come to slashdot for this. Is it because they use the word 'drone' instead of remote control helicopter that this becomes something for nerds?
It is interesting as a legal precedent / question:
Can the rights group go after the hunters for destruction of property? Was the drone violating private property by flying over it? What about the right to privacy of the hunters? Were the hunters within their rights to protect their privacy from the air? If not, can a paparazzi use a drone to fly over the private grounds of celebrities? Of politicians? Can the police use a drone to fly over private grounds? If you're on your own land, do you have an expectation of privacy even though "regular" planes and helicopters fly over at regular intervals in most places?
Given the recent mandate given to the FAA to open up the air space to drones, these questions are worth thinking about, even if this particular story is mostly fluff.
Animal rights activists are not welcome in the south. People here eat beef, bacon, chicken as a side dish to deer. Also, people in the south don't trap rodents and release them.. they are killed on spot. And they know how to shoot .
First off you won't be pressing charges because you can't trace a shotgun, second no one on the highway was in danger pellet size for hunting small birds is less than a BB in most case and the power drops dramatically with distance (I've actually been shot by a shotgun using birdshot at less than 50 meters no damage at all) and third I would have shot it down too, and you wouldn't get it back either.
I suspect we will begin to see airspace arguments in court.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
SHARK wants to cry about what they were doing was legal. Well, the hunters shooting pigeons is legal.
Watch the video.
SHARK was stupid in their expectations.
Of all the "abused" animal issues, they picked pigeons.
No sympathy. The result was easily predictable.
You would think in today's world, you would think with all the cool toys out there, people would pick up other hobbies besides the torture of animals.
If you actually read the article, there was no illegal hunting going on. The hunt was well within season, and was also on a hunting plantation. So what we have here is a case of hunters accused of shooting down a remote helicopter that was actually trespassing in private airspace. Considering the nature of the hunt in progress on the ground it's no wonder it was shot down. I mean what do you expect if what you are filming flies and those hunting it are looking up. It could be a case of bad vehicle placement, though I doubt it. They will never be able to prove that it was purposefully shot down though.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Of all the things to try to save, you're trying to save pigeons? There are so many of the flying rats in major cities, you could kill millions of them and there would STILL be too many.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Frankly if someone is harassing others with a toy aircraft and it's in an active hunting/shooting area, I can't imagine any other outcome. It's a stupid publicity stunt, nothing more.
I am curious what rights we have to shoot down drones.
It seems that the very nature of surveillance drones is going to make it difficult to differentiate between 'protected' & questionably legitimate law enforcement equipment and private peeping toms.
- tensions in our lives that are attacking our minds, unite themselves together to make our consciousness blind - op'ivy
The whole thing reads like satire. Good work, Slashdot.
you know the hunters are basically happy shooting things. the 'SHARK" people want to save the pigeons. you should all compromise. Have the "SHARK" people just launch an ass-load of cheap RC things into the air and let the hunters shoot those. this'll keep the hunters in an amused state and the pigeons in a not-dead state. win-win.
--- this is my no-sig sig ---
Should have used a autopilot with a plane+PTZ camera flying circles vs. a multicopter.... much hard to shoot something down going at 30mph...
The military figured that out with the U2 (hence the SR71 was developed).
It's sad that this is how our society has come to treat each other. On one side you've got people who are willing to (questionably) push the boundaries of privacy law so they can gather videos they can put on YouTube to drum up support for their cause. On the other side, you have people who are willing to fire weapons at another person's property (the helicopter and everything underneath & behind it) when the law can't solve their problems for them. We ought to take both these groups and lock them up where their stupid bickering will stop endangering the rest of us.
Thanks for posting - now... how much text do I have to include to get by the filters?
8-PP
Like the violent crime rates and the incidences of murder.
If the data here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate give any indication, then crime rates for violent crime and murder in New York (581.7 and 6.4) are lower than in e.g. Mobile, Alabama (667.0 and 9.8) and Boston, Massachusetts (903.5 and 11.3).
So this data doesn't provide any support for your idea that strict gun control laws might somehow result in higher crime rates.
I'm not claiming that it shows that gun control laws reduce crime rates (I believe that the situation is much more complicated than that and should take account of a broad range of socio-economic and historic conditions), but judging by the crime rates it certainly doesn't seem to hurt.
I didn't have an opinion until I looked up "live pigeon shoot". Instead of using "clay pigeons", frisbees made out of clay, for target practice...they have caged, live pigeons, release them, and then try and shoot them...for practice. I hate PETA, never heard of SHARK, and that still seems wrong.
I no fan of hunters, either, having a particular distaste for killing anything that doesn't "need killin'", but that doesn't drive me to uniformly marginalize all of them as drunken idiots...
And I, having grown up around them, recognize that probably 90% of hunters ARE drunken idiots. And for some odd reason the brain damage caused by their incessant alcohol abuse dovetails amazingly well with a hatred of "niggers" and "homos" and a love of all things "conservative"...
As I recall, manned aircraft are required to fly at least 500 feet above inhabited structures. While this wouldn't strictly apply to unmanned aircraft, the implication is that it's legal to fly above private property if you're at least 500 high. It would also be difficult to bring down a UAV with a shotgun at that distance. Well, maybe not. UAVs are pretty fragile. Their mistake was to fly too low. Damaging private property, the UAV, while in legal airspace, could possibly be prosecuted. Disclosure: IANAL.
This in no way suggests that I am for or against either group. If the hunters were following the laws regarding shooting released animals, IMO they can do so. If they are breaking any laws while doing so, then the animal rights group is OK trying to catch them at it, as long as they don't break any laws doing so.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
AMA is the largest and most well established organization for radio controlled flight in the US. What SHARK did is legal by US code, but it would have been disallowed under AMA membership rules. Why should this be important? Because the AMA is not just a "club", they are an activist group that has been pushing to keep channels open for model aviation (and not for stuff like what SHARK did). And more importantly, they provide injury insurance. If that big helicopter hurt someone who would pay for the damages? The pilot would, he's taking a huge risk flying without insurance. Courts look poorly on people that don't have insurance because they were not willing to follow some simple rules. (The insurance is cheap)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
What the hell this incident could be turned into a pretty interesting business. RC planes hunting!
If they shot down the drone over a highway and it caused a car crash, is the shooter to blame?
If you crash your drone into the highway can you just say someone shot it?
If someone flies their drone into your private property, it lands, is it trespassing then?
(what if you jam the signal)
I don't know that the drone was being shot at. Some in the back ground asked if the drone was being shot at. The video did not show the drone after it landed with any shot marks or damage. So my assumption at this point is: they video was creating an illusion the drone was being shot at. As for the drone being only over the road I have no visual reference once it is above the tree level to say it was only over the road and did not extend past the trees into the property were there was hunting. If they were attempting to disrupt or harass hunters while hunting, in Indiana this is a violation of the law.
IC 14-22-37-1
\”Game animal\” defined
Sec. 1. As used in this chapter, \”game animal\” means an animal
that may be legally taken under this article.
As added by P.L.1-1995, SEC.15.
IC 14-22-37-2
Violations
Sec. 2. (a) A person who knowingly or intentionally interferes
with the legal taking of a game animal by another person with intent
to prevent the taking commits a Class C misdemeanor.
(b) A person who knowingly or intentionally:
(1) disturbs a game animal; or
(2) engages in an activity or places an object or substance that
will tend to disturb or otherwise affect the behavior of a game
animal;
with intent to prevent or hinder the legal taking commits a Class C
misdemeanor.
(c) A person who knowingly or intentionally enters or remains:
(1) upon public land; or
(2) upon private land without permission of the owner or the
owner\’s agent;
with intent to violate this section commits a Class C misdemeanor.
I, for one full, support this law.
In conservative states, these grey areas are usually left to the discretion of local law enforcement. From the way the article made this incident sound, the Sheriff's department filed a report and that's the end of it for them. They probably know who did it and probably applauded the shooter for his effort.
The law may tell you that you can photograph me on my private property, but if I come out and kick your ass and smash your camera, local law enforcement in my county isn't going to take your side (especially if you're part of some anti-hunting organization). You can go to the county prosecutor and whine your case, but she's not going to give a shit, either. That still leaves you the option of opening a civil case against me, but unfortunately for you, in this county the judges are the least likely to give a goddamn.
You see, in conservative rural areas, the law is often secondary to 'common sense.' People living in these areas have a high expectation of privacy and no one gives a shit if you think you have a right to invade my privacy because some professor told you you could while studying for photojournalism. The laws around here are pretty flexible, one way or the other. Local law enforcement doesn't care if I have illegal fireworks and set them off, they don't care if I have illegal guns and fire them, and they don't care if I make, distribute, and drink moonshine. They would care about hippies trying to interfere with hunting and would probably encourage the hunters to sabotage the hippies.
Legislation is just a part of the justice system. It doesn't really tell you what's allowed and what's not. How law enforcement and the judiciary acts is just as important as the letter of law.
Crazy animal rights group trying to stop people from hunting sky-rats on private property vs. dumb, childish hillbillies who shoot other people's property...tough one.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
They were flying into an event where gunfire was expected and then landed the drone after they heard gun fire. The only evidence that their helicopter was shot at was that one of the rotors was damaged was that one of the rotors was damaged, but since they never lost control of the drone it could have easily gone up in the air with that. Were they over public property? Based on the video they have posted its impossible to tell. Is it even safe to fly an RC helicopter over a public highway? probably not.
Next year, they should use big potato cannons to fire live pigeons at the drone. Imagine the video of a flaming pigeon going through the rotor!
...because if you don't have anything to hide... then you won't mind somebody watching your every move and posting it on YouTube.
The SHARK activists were at the scene in a van? Surely there were no dead insects on the grill of this van - all animal rights activists must drive at 5mph or less to avoid the senseless killing of innocent animals, correct? To place the rights of the pigeons above the rights of the insects is speciesist.
Why would I want to eat the old tough deer? I might as well eat at the Sizzler, plus it's cheaper and quicker.
There is no hunting involved here. In fact the best hunting of the day was taking down the drone. This is (to paraphrase Lewis Black) turning a petting zoo into Auschwitz. This is a bunch of overgrown boys who never outgrew their toy guns, and just gotta have a place to shoot something. I guess that's good, otherwise these clowns would be shooting innocent bystanders by accident as they played with their "Weapons". Of course that didn't help Dick Cheney's lawyer buddy, but what the hell, there we're talking about a guy who couldn't hit the right country (Dick, the weapons were in the one with an "n" not the one with a "q"), its no surprise he plugged a lawyer instead of a grouse.
I know the animal activists can be a little annoying, self righteousness just pisses people off. It doesn't change the fact that the idiots with the guns, are in fact idiots with guns. It also points at one of the problems with our society... we give idiots guns. You're 10 times more likely to be shot by an armed idiot you know well, than by a stranger committing a crime. I know some folks get a sense of security being armed. I would argue the facts simply don't support your premise. We either need smarter guns or smarter armed folk. Good luck with all of that.
Shotguns are used in a pigeon shoot. The rounds have small shot so as to not destroy the birds while still killing them quickly. Plus, the rounds are unlikely to have had sufficient range to have been of danger to the vehicles on the highway. (The distance between the hunters and the highway was not given.) At our local trap range we often fire in the direction of active aircraft runways and horse trails. The high grass beyond the trap house is cut back to show the range of the shells. That range is extremely limited.
Yeah, right. Anyone want to take a wager that they shot down their own drone? Shit like that is sorta the 'terrorist' MO. They've done it before. Why else would they launch their craft if the event was shut down and they no longer had a reason to do so?
On the other hand, wanton destruction of other's property is really not the MO of the hunters and shooters in general. When you've got to fight for the right to use public lands and get blamed for other's abuse of them, or having to deal with special regulations on privately owned land to shoot, you're careful about things like this.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Any of you bunny hugers that deliberately try to ruin my hunt better hope that the only thing that gets shot is their drone.
Hurricane Island Outward Bound
OB
If they are going to fly drones, people who object to those over their proiperty will buy goose guns. Those are designed to kill big birds high in the air. Should be lethal to drones and RC helicopters.
Worst... videographer... ever...
http://thetandd.com/animal-rights-group-says-drone-shot-down/article_017a720a-56ce-11e1-afc4-001871e3ce6c.html?mode=video
BTW, this video clears up... "highway was not busy", "shots were fired into air, not at roadway or cars"
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
Here's an idea: open up a range, and instead of shooting live animals or skeet, release toy drones, airplanes, maybe even, yes, rockets!
Then start the shootin'.
You can call it the Hunter S. Thompson Memorial Mechanical Skeet Shoot Range.
Yee-haw!!
I watched a few of the youtube videos posted by the leader of SHARK. They were full of ad hominem attacks. While he may have a point in some of his videos, the point fades due to his annoying name-calling and deliverance implying banjo music.
Anyways, pigeons are simply winged rats. I shot dozens of them while growing up because they would make a mess of the hayloft in our barn.
Additionally all this banter about hunting being wrong--why do you care? I eat what I shoot except for varmints and pests (woodchuck, pigeons, etc.).
Not only that, but the mighty hunters in question knew exactly how fucked-up their little party was, and were so ashamed of what they were doing that they A) stopped just because some PETA folks were watching, and B) took pot-shots at the RC helicopter. Manly men, to be sure. -Jay-
They bring farm-raised pigeons out to the "hunting site" in cages. Now, they could just stand around the cages and blow the shit out of the pigeons and be done with it, but instead, they consider it "sporting" to stand around the cages, then open the cage doors, and *then* blow the shit out of the pigeons. These people are sick little fucks.
Or, he's known enough hunters to know that that's what a good number of them do - wander out into the woods, get at least mildly "lubricated", and go "hunting."
And I've known enough hunters to know what a good number of them do - go out into the woods and hunt responsibly without a drop of alcohol in their system.
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
How can they use the name SHARK for an animal rights group? Ever watch a shark hunt and kill it's prey? Very brutal. Not respectful or kind at all. These guys are a joke. And I bet they left that place and went and talked about the incident over a steak and potato. Or maybe a burger and fries.
If they are anti-hunting animals, I think they should be all for the hunting of their drones instead.
Shooting pidgens on the ground looks boring. If they can't fly, they should raise the boxes 20 feet up or so and make them fall.
Before the ban on fox hunting in the UK, being a hunt saboteur was a great way to spend a healthy day in the fresh air fucking up the moronic pleasure of twats in hunting pink.
Sometimes democracy triumphs over the selfish vested interests of land owners. And yes, too fucking right it is a question of the majority trampling on the "rights" of a minority, just like they did with slavery and employers using child labour.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"PULL"
Whine whine whine ... too many bleeding hearts out there. Hey PETA, the world is a fucking sewer and we are turds floating down stream .. get used to it. Meanwhile, you try to fly a drone (or whatever the hell it's called) over my land and I will not only shoot it down, then stomp on it with my White Supremicist Hob-Nailed boots, but I will catch up with you PETA folks and skin you alive an inch at a time, after feeding your eyeballs to my dog, Bowser. After that, I'll get serious on your family members. Now, go away and shut the fuck up. Period. Full Stop. Amen.
...a DeltaPlane! When they saw the delataplane, they thought it was an eagle. One guy pulled his gun and BANG!... "Missed!". Fortunately the "eagle" has dropped its prey ...
Claude LaFreniere aka climenole
Was drones is season when it was shot down - I think so!
quite some time ago, i brought down a particularly annoying neighbor's wireless pen-cam equiped RC chopper with a wrist rocket (slingshot). it was an awesome once-in-a-lifetime bullseye! fucked his little toy ALL up--and he didn't get it back, either. does this count, here (it was over my backyard)?
If I had mod points, I would mod you up. I don't fully agree with your viewpoint, but I really appreciate your argument.
The deer, otherwise left alone, could go on to do his own thing, have babies of his own, get eaten by wolves, whatever. That's Nature.
Why is it worse to be eaten by a person than eaten by a wolf? Prey animals are literally devoured alive, their tendons cut so they cannot run and their entrails ripped out of their still-struggling bodies. As the relative of human hunters, I am sure you know that the ability to kill cleanly is considered a minimum competence. It's natural for prey animals to die exhausted and in terror. That doesn't mean it's good. Sometimes -- a lot of the time -- unnatural is better.
I do not hunt. But if I did, I would do it humanely, with a gun.
As you say, shotgun with birdshot.
I see the setup at the end here, claiming the local cops are corrupt and protecting the hunters. This way when the police refuse to investigate those on the ranch defending against an illegal trespass and protecting against interference with a lawful (although distasteful IMHO) activity, they can claim conspiracy.
"It is important to note how dangerous this was, as they were shooting toward and into a well-travelled highway,"
Watch the video. Well-travelled highway? It's the standard remote two-lane, no-shoulder backroad you find in the area even if it technically has the name "highway." Not one car goes by during the entire video. If I have the right highway, it runs through the huge plantation, their property on both sides.
I also think killing for sport is wrong. I've never done it, never will, and my kids who hunt know it's wrong too.
Admittedly, killing your own does come with some thrill, but the main reason is to get a lot of inexpensive food that hasn't been packed full of hormones, force-fed stuff it's not supposed to eat, or had all of the flavor bred out of it.
In the middle of it, I sometimes get deer from hunters who do kill for sport, but make sure someone eats what they kill. I still have a bit of a problem with their motive, but I'm not going to complain about free food for my family.