06-24-2015, 09:31 PM
While I don't disagree with you in practice, I think this question should examined from an enforcement perspective. If an CO were to inspect a livewell or cooler away from the lake and find live crawdads, how is he to determine whether they were being transported for dinner or more nefarious purposes? If a bucket biologist claimed they were to be eaten, and they are presumed innocent until proven guilty, there could be no intervention. Otherwise the only time someone could be prosecuted is if they were observed dumping them into another body of water. At that point the damage is done.
Transporting live fish or crayfish is illegal because simply possessing them is not. I would be curious to know how many tickets have been written in the last 10 years, or how many successful prosecutions have taken place for illegal transplant vs transport.
Still, similar to speeding, the choice to transport them illegally is up to the individual.
That said, years ago, I killed a cooler full of crawdads by putting them on ice. When I arrived home, I was shocked to find they were still alive. Imagine my surprise. As a matter of conscience, and since the ice didn't work, I felt compelled to put them into a pot of boiling water to kill them. For good measure I poisoned the water with some lemon and Old Bay crab boil. That did the trick.
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Transporting live fish or crayfish is illegal because simply possessing them is not. I would be curious to know how many tickets have been written in the last 10 years, or how many successful prosecutions have taken place for illegal transplant vs transport.
Still, similar to speeding, the choice to transport them illegally is up to the individual.
That said, years ago, I killed a cooler full of crawdads by putting them on ice. When I arrived home, I was shocked to find they were still alive. Imagine my surprise. As a matter of conscience, and since the ice didn't work, I felt compelled to put them into a pot of boiling water to kill them. For good measure I poisoned the water with some lemon and Old Bay crab boil. That did the trick.
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