Starting Jan. 1, hunters will no longer be able to use trail cameras to track wildlife. Violators may be subject to fines, lose hunting rights or forfeit their kill.
The Arizona Game and Fish Commission says cameras hinder wildlife’s opportunity to elude detection, or what’s called “fair chase.”
Commission Chairman Kurt Davis says the result is cameras get set up around water holes. That has a big impact in Arizona where water sources can be scarce.
“You're creating a lot of ingress and egress into a finite resource that all wildlife needs to have access to, as well as livestock. That ingress and egress can affect that wildlife. They'd be less apt to go in and drink with people going in and out of the water hole,” Davis said.
Davis added part of the commission’s job is to maintain some balance for wildlife. That gets more and more difficult as hunting technology gets better and cheaper.
