Night Time Activity.

[u/Saltshaker445]

Zulus520R on a Ruger Precision Rifle in 22lr. Scope works great and has some cool features. The rifle is a great shooter too all around great setup.

[u/[deleted]]

I thought night shooting was illegal canada wide? where can a guy legally do some night shooting?

edit : not trying to be accusatory or a prick, hoping you tell me im wrong as fuck so I can justify a night sight lmao

[u/IPSC_Canuck → u/[deleted]]

So, I’m not a lawyer. I’m just some guy on the internet. Take this all with a grain of salt.

We ran into this at my gun club while dealing with the CFO(Onterrible). They wouldn’t approve our range for night operations except for law enforcement training because we didn’t meet the lighting requirements. We were never told what those requirements were and I don’t remember ever finding it in the range construction guidelines, when you could actually access them.

As far as I know, there isn’t a federal, or provincial law prohibiting the discharge of a firearm at night. But they could, in theory, charge you with reckless endangerment if they deemed you didn’t “know your target and beyond”. I think depending on the demeanour of both yourself and any peace officer who catch you doing this, if they really want to charge you with something, they’ll find a blanket charge. It might not get beyond the crown, but it’d be stressful and you may be forced to surrender your firearm at the time.

On the topic of “hunting”, I can only speak for Ontario because that’s the only province I’ve dealt with this… most seasons and jurisdictions prohibit hunting 1/2hr after sunset to 1/2 before sunrise(night). I believe there may be exceptions, but I don’t know well enough to say for sure. In Ontario you are deemed to be “hunting” if you possess an uncased (not covered on 6 sides) firearm in a “game inhabited area”. I used to work closely with conservation officers at work, and would vehemently disagree with them on this point as I’m not a big hunter, but I do carry a firearm at times for predator control in certain places. They all agreed that they would deem me to be hunting, and charge me as such if I were breaking other hunting regs, like lack of blaze orange, lack of a tag, hunting out of season, or hunting more than 1/2 hr after sunset, etc... I wasn’t sure legally what the outcome would be, but the fact of the matter remains that regardless of the outcome, defending yourself against any of those charges would be costly even if you got away scot free. While working with the CO’s it was common place to see hunting charges exceed the $10000 mark, and I would actually see the actual numbers reflected in the paper if the individual was convicted. A good portion of the cases, the fines and charges were pretty close to the amount charged on scene.

The saving grace… if you can somehow prove that you’re target shooting, that can pass as a reasonable excuse to be in possession of an uncased firearm in a game inhabited area. If you have targets, a spotting scope, some sort of log that shows you have a plan, or any other equipment involved in target practice, that might be sufficient to convince a CO that you’re in fact out there shooting. I routinely go do load development in these areas and I don’t worry that I’m going to be charged.

In Ontario, there is, according to conservation officers at least, a reverse onus to prove that you aren’t hunting. I’ve always had my doubts as to the legitimacy of this due to the presumption of innocence within our jurisprudence. But they are adamant that this reverse onus holds up in court. I’ve never really gotten that far into its legitimacy or done much research on it as I take actions to be able to prove I’m shooting targets without a shadow of a doubt.

My thought would be, “why risk it?”. Unless you have an airtight plan and all of your ducks in a row, is it really worth the hassle? If you were playing around with some NVG stuff then I completely get it, but make sure you can prove that you’re not hunting, at least in Ontario.

We do need to flex our rights, but being a martyr doesn’t really help you, and in some cases you could produce case precedent that we really don’t want.

[u/BritBuc-1 → u/IPSC_Canuck]

I take the dog hunting for raccoons at night during season. It’s a ball ache when someone calls the cops and you gotta show yours and your dogs licenses

[u/IPSC_Canuck → u/BritBuc-1]

Right on that sounds like a blast! Super frustrating when the Karens have to karen.

[u/AresV92 → u/IPSC_Canuck]

Yup coons for me too and yup got the cops called on me as well. At least the co that showed up yelling for me to come out of the woods just wanted to talk. I think he must have suspected what we were up to because we were on crown land. Ngl it was stressful coming out of the woods to cop cars with flashlights on me. Just as a precaution I cased and slung my shotgun before coming out and leashed my dog and held my hands up.

It sucks that we have to worry about getting shot when we are just hunting and not hurting anyone, but Karen's are definitely a thing. The co said she heard gunshots in the distance and thought a gang war was happening in the ravine a km from her house. The co laughed it off after it became obvious we were good. When he left he said they were gonna go bitch her out for wasting all of our time and explain to the Karen what crown land is etc.

Other than that hunting at night was a really fun experience.

[u/IPSC_Canuck → u/AresV92]

That’s unfortunate, but at least the interaction was overall positive with the CO. Still kinda ruins your hunt though.

There really aughta be a “Karening” charge on the books… i suppose “mischief” would be close enough.

[u/AresV92 → u/IPSC_Canuck]

I think if someone bothers the police with nuisance reports often enough the officers would probably give a warning and then yeah something like a mischief charge could be given to hopefully prevent further misuse of resources.