Wow! This has been an informative post. I have to admit that I have had my good and bad experiences with the law. Mostly good. As an example:

This year fishing for chum on Hood Canal near the hatchery - on the day that the snow hit really hard - I was standing in snow on the bank of the canal with a fish that I had forgotten to mark on my catch record. The fishing was really great and I did forget. Along comes the game warden and his partner. They checked my license ( which I promptly gave him) looked at my gear and told me that I had not marked my catch. He asked me if I knew that. I informed him that I was sorry and that I had forgotten to mark the card and that I did know the regulations. I don't know if it was that I looked honest, that he saw the other salmon that I had marked on my card or that he took pity on a stupid fisherman who would come out in 12 inches of snow just to catch some chums. He told me to mark it, not do it again and have a nice day. I was polite to them, they were polite to me.

Now I realize that I was guilty of an infraction. I would have rightfully received a fine. I didn't. I got lucky I guess. But one thing I know for sure is that I would have deserved whatever I got because I got caught breaking a law. Wes and others have it right, it you are not doing anything wrong - then you have nothing to fear by a search of any kind. If you are doing something wrong - suck it up and take your punishment.

Does this mean that my constitutional rights should be walked on? No. But I will tell you that if I am standing there with no one else around and no camera and an officer comes up with a gun on his belt and asks me to do something, or submit to a search that I don't want, I will do it and then ***** about it later to the right people.

Certainly I would be upset if anyone were to search my boat/car, house etc without my permission. This is a basic crossing of personal boundaries. Does this mean that the Warden should not be able to search without permission? I don't think so. They have a very unpleasant job to do. Their job is not about walking around and smiling and making sure that everyone has a nice day. It is about catching people that are taking unfair advantage of others by breaking the laws. If there is probable cause to believe that I was fishing - it does not have to be illegal - and I am not standing near my boat, it is not reasonable for me to expect that the Warden just hang around and wait for me to come back to search it. However, if I come back and see him/her in my boat then I would expect some kind of explanation.

What this topic really boils down to is not the legal rights of an officer to do their job but how we feel about them doing it. A lot of this will be colored by past experience. If I had a bad run in as my only experience, I would not look too kindly on an officer no matter what they were doing.


In the mean time, I will do my best to abide by the law, and if I get caught doing something stupid then so be it.

Just my 2 cents worth.