City limits?

I have a pond to hunt for ducks and geese but half of the pond is in the city limits of stillwater. This thing is loaded with waterfowl but I dont want to get in trouble. What would you do? The pond has houses on one side also but it is a large pond/small lake.

I’d have an email exchange with authorized personnel from the correct authorities on the matter. Not an internet forum.

Yes, you might as well call or email the CO and get the official word because you WILL be getting called about 8 seconds after you fire the first shot.

And even if it IS legal, I would also say get a contact number for the Stillwater police and Washington Co. Sherrif and call them to inform them that you will be hunting and that any reports from that area should be ignored. Surburbanite homeowners are prone to massive over-reactions and my concern would be some McMansion-owning housewife making up porkies and telling law enforcement that someone is “shooting at” houses. Obviously, this can produce a very tense situation that is best avoided, not to mention the waste of police time.

Grouse

Im just gonna hang it up. It wont be fun with all the complaints anyways. Thanks all

IMO we need more people testing those lines.

Get your documents in order, calls placed and if all is good go bang out some birds. If there is that 1 or 2 people who dont like it they’ll go to the city center and who knows you might be the last guy to ever hunt that pond, pretty cool story for the grandkids.

Also note that there may be a misunderstanding by the local LEOs about what really is legal according to the COs. My neighbor likes to duck and goose hunt a lake in the western suburbs. According to the CO he is legal to do so but the local LEOs have other ideas about it so they try to make his life tougher while he is hunting watching for any violation that may occur as he transitions from the water to land at the end of a hunt.

My neighbor has also had to bring in a CO to set the LEOs straight on the rules when city LEO responds to a property owners call.

In your case, it may depend on how far you want to push your neighbors.

I agree with nhamm in principle, it would be good if more people asserted the right to hunt where it is legal, but in this particular case I’d say the OP is probably right. It’s probably more trouble than it’s worth.

As Kyhl rightly points out, there are a tangle of city/township/county ordinances that can make things pretty dodgy from a legal POV. Add to that, the fact that if the surburbanite homeowners want to make life miserable, they basically will mount a police harassment campaign and get you to stop even if you are in the right.

Grouse

I bow hunt in the south metro, in the heart of 601 on 20+ acres. The land is surrounded by 700+K homes, it is mostly swamp and hill land that is not develop-able. I sneak in and sneak out like I was never there. I have gotten flack in the past by certain neighbors that do not like hunting. They actually went as far as to harass me and scare deer away once. It was the last time they made that mistake after having a few words exchanged with local authorities about hunter harassment.

Everyone’s replies are spot on, just because it’s legal, doesn’t mean the neighborhood is aware that it is.