Representative Grama presents technical fish-and-wildlife corrections; committee discusses snaring penalties, air guns and enforcement of water‑use rules

Representative Grama told the Natural Resources & Energy committee that H.31 principally contains technical corrections to align statute with Fish and Wildlife Board rules and update obsolete language, with one substantive change: raising the penalty points for illegally snaring animals from 10 points to 20 points.

“It's really mostly technical changes,” Representative Grama said as he introduced H.31, and he flagged the snaring penalty as the bill’s main substantive provision: moving snaring from a 10‑point violation (which generally allows continued hunting) to a 20‑point violation that can lead to loss of license.

Grama also described draft language that had been proposed to add certain modern projectile devices — described in committee as air guns — to a statutory list that governs firearms carriage in vehicles. The committee removed that language before crossover because the draft wording lacked a clear statutory definition and could have been read to include handguns. “We ended up striking that section,” Grama said, explaining that the committee lacked time to define “air gun” and therefore deferred further action.

Following H.31, Grama walked the committee through H.231, a related package of changes that reorganizes penalty point references, strikes obsolete species names, clarifies reporting requirements for taking big game (including moose), and updates multiple appendix references after a rules renumbering by the Fish and Wildlife Board. Among the substantive changes discussed:

- Snaring was reiterated as moving from a 10‑point to a 20‑point violation to strengthen deterrence. Grama said the goal is to reduce the practice by increasing consequences. - Crossbow hunting has been reclassified in the rule renumbering: references that previously listed crossbow violations explicitly are being removed because crossbow provisions now appear in a consolidated section. Some point assessments for failing to report big‑game takes are treated so they remain a 10‑point violation rather than being captured under broader 20‑point language in the appendix structure. - The department’s statutory authority to require presentation of a rifle or shotgun (and requests to present those firearms to a warden) remains in statute; language to add “air guns” or similarly worded devices risked extending that requirement to handguns and was therefore pulled for further drafting. - H.231 also contains provisions to allow enforcement of newly adopted “use of waters” rules by motor‑vehicle and boating enforcement officers, state troopers and fish and wildlife wardens, and to authorize civil penalties under the Judicial Bureau for violations of those rules. Grama said this aligns enforcement authority across agencies for rules that affect vessels and watercraft.

Committee members sought clarification on how the point system will operate after the renumbering and how reporting requirements interact with appendix violations that carry different point values. Grama explained that some duplicative references were removed to avoid double‑penalizing hunters and that the draft reassigns several cross references to the appendix sections where they now reside.

The committee did not take any final vote on H.31 or H.231 during this meeting. Representative Grama invited further committee review of definitions (notably for air guns) and refinements to the point and reporting provisions before the bills move forward.

The committee flagged several follow‑up needs: a clear statutory definition of “air gun” if the committee intends to regulate carriage in vehicles, a clean mapping of old appendix section numbers to the new numbering so hunters and wardens can track changes, and coordination with enforcement agencies on the use‑of‑waters enforcement language.