Quote Originally Posted by rkumetz View Post
It would seem to me that falconers encouraging law enforcement to come and see that they have nothing to hide would let some air out of her zeppelin of stupidity.

That is precisely the sort of lunatic that I worry about when I think about falconry deregulation. If there are no rules which we participate in making to abide by then emotional ideas about what we should
and should not do with animals become the only test. Poor regulations that are livable are, IMO, preferable to being subject to the emotional dandruff of lunatics.
To your first (quoted) point, I believe that it is naive to think that when said enforcement officers show up that they will 1) understand suitable falconry facilities, even were some to jump up and punch them in the nose and 2) understand esoteric and complex and a lengthy body of rules about a subject in which they have no expertese and even less interest. It is not a rare scenario for citations and seizures of birds to happen during administrative inspections for either or both of those reasons. Of the adminstrative inspections I am aware of, I believe ~10% resulted in seizure or a citation, which is a shockingly high rate.

To your second point, just exactly how is it going to empower these types if the provisions are removed from the rules that allow enforcement to drop by on a whim? You have expressed some concern about this court case attracting attention, but the groups that want to do away with falconry are already well aware of us.

There have been scenarios where that proverbial whim was created by members of the public. Indeed, it could even be easily argued that Operation Falcon was created by complaints from the general public - although in that fine example of abused enforcement power they had warrants when they dropped by. I know of a few cases where the

Realistically, its only a minor inconvience to an enforcement officer to get a warrant if they really think something is afoot.