The Wildlife Commission in the state of Nevada issued a new ruling over the last couple weeks which made some changes to the regulations about what people can and cannot use to hunt. Normally you’d think that people would want animals harvested with the most accurate and effective firearms available on the market to limit the pain and suffering of the animals in question. It seems like the folks in Nevada disagree.
First on the list, the Wildlife Commission has summarily banned any firearm that uses an electronic sighting system or electronically controlled firing system. The regulation is laser-focused on TrackingPoint’s “precision guided” firearms, which enable shooters to put rounds more precisely on target than with traditional methods. Rifles like TrackingPoint’s gun should reduce the number of animals wounded or maimed rather than humanely harvested, but Nevada thinks that this simply isn’t sporting and isn’t having any of it.
Next up is a ban on ammunition with a case length longer than 3 inches. It sounds like the purpose of this regulation is to keep people from taking shots at animals over longer distances than they can accurately shoot but it feels like a backwards way of doing things. Reducing the permitted case length to 3 inches eliminates a number of traditional hunting cartridges, and increases the probability that the animals being harvested will suffer unnecessarily.
It feels to me like the new regulations are an attempt by the older generation of hunters to keep their “red and green” traditions in tact: hunting with “traditional” calibers using “traditional” firearms and “traditional” methods. Times are changing, and some of these improvements might actually make hunting more effective and humane. Personally I’m in favor of anything that reduces the chance of an animal being in pain, and improved accuracy firearms with larger caliber cartridges is squarely in that domain.