Thread: What is last light?

What do you consider legal shooting last light? For me i have always seen it that, as long as you can see the deer through your scope without any artificial light then its legal to shoot.
But ive shot a few deer now right on the very last bits of light, and within 5 to 10 minutes of shooting them i need a headlamp to see properly, shot another one like that on Saturday and got us talking about how different people might interpret last light and what is legal shooting light.

whats does DOC mean by "30 mins after sunset"? does that mean 30 mins after its gone dark?

Whats your opinion?

There is an official sun set usually found with weather forecast for any given day, and location. So you would officially have 30mins after that. For instance, I'm currently looking at the weather for Gore on Thursday, as I'll be hunting kinda near there. Sun set for there is 5:19pm, so no shooting after 5:49pm.

Haha... That's a can of worms! There are many definitions of twilight, and all have legal weight. See here: https://www.digital-photo-secrets.co...ical-twilight/

I'll see myself out quietly and scurry off to get some popcorn now...

The 30 minutes after/before sunset/sunrise has always been my understanding per DoC

Sunset/sunrise as per published almanac etc.

Other forestry management companies use the same in my experience

For DOC hunting permits, 30 minutes after sunset means exactly that.
The time of sunset is in the newspaper, on the metservice website and heaps of other sources, it's probably even on your phone.

I was walking out along a track just barely able to see where the track goes when a deer started barking at me. There was no way I could see it without artificial light, yet it was before sunset (dense canopy, cloudy day, east side of the hill). I was already carrying out two deer so I politely told the barking one to F off.

The official almanac sunset time for a place nearby and the actual time you see the sun disappear over the horizon can be different depending on hills and altitude etc. Unless they actually specify sunset times as defined by almanac etc then the observed physical sunset should trump it.

Hard to say exactly when the sun set if you couldn't see it because you were in the bush and/or it was cloudy though, and hard to know when its half an hour before you're about to see the sun rise...

And in practical terms the length of usable twilight can be very different as you get further north/south.

Really the exact minute probably won't matter as long as you don't take the piss.

For Maritime it’s an before legal hour of sunset and an hour after sunrise as defined in the paper by the weather section. An half before and after for hunting I could accept

In addition to the sources stated above (phone/newspaper/met service etc.) you will find a number of smart watches will also give you sunrise and sunset times. For example the Sunnto Traverse gives sunrise and sunset times at your current GPS location. Pretty certain the Garmin Fenix range do too and you'll probably find a number of GPS's also give this information if you go looking deep enough into their menus as well.

Regarding the maritime definition that's interesting because for aviation there is a set of tables that depict times which relate to zones depicted on a map of the country. On the table a time is specified for the beginning of morning civil twilight and the end of civil evening twilight for each day of the year. This is because the length of twilight varies according to latitude, sunrise and sunset, and time of year (inclination of the earth's axis) on the equator it's very short, at the poles it can extend for 24 hours. I would guess that the maritime definition only covers NZ and is defined that way for simplicity, but I could be wrong. So anyone or any organisation using that term needs to be specific as to what their reference is. For hunting I agree with SiB above, that's how it's always been as far as I know.

Originally Posted by GravelBen

The official almanac sunset time for a place nearby and the actual time you see the sun disappear over the horizon can be different depending on hills and altitude etc. .

Spot on Ben. The 'official' sources almanac / newspaper / metservice etc don't know exactly where you are and therefore cannot allow for local terrain. I suspect they give a sea level horizon sunset/rise time for the given location. Makes sense for Maritime as Gapped axe says. But deep in a gully the sun will set behind the hill much earlier than up on the tops, even at the exact same lat/long. Maybe the GPS smart devices can correct for local terrain ? - but I doubt it.

Logically it should be 30 mins after the sun actually sets behind the hill wherever you may be, but maybe that's too sensible or too hard to prove. And it doesn't help if it's too cloudy to see the sun. Can't argue with a published timing I guess.

Either way, unless the DOC permit conditions actually refer to published sunrise/sunset times (and would probably have to specify the approved source or you could 'publish' your own) then they're leaving it open - and I think if they accused you of breaching that permit condition it would be them having to prove it.

Obviously if someone finds you shooting a deer under a spotlight in the middle of the night its obvious (and you should know better than doing that on public land), but if for example someone tried to claim you were hunting 35 minutes after sunset and you said "no I looked at my watch when the sun was setting and it was only 25 minutes after that when I shot the deer" then without them having solid evidence to prove it...

I would say it is the same with driving and legally required to turn your lights on. In that case it is 1/2 and hour before sunset and half an hour after sunrise as published in the paper and weather sites. So it may still be light but officially "dark," so you could still get pinged if some Doc geezer got a bee in his bonnet

The point of the rule is safety. People get shot in broad daylight through poor target identification. Personally I think if you have good optics and are sure of the target and firing zone 30 mins or an hour after sunset is a non issue if you are acting safely and I doubt it would be of concern.
I always watch until I cant see clearly through my Binos any longer

In 30 years of hunting I have never pondered this stupid question before , if you can identify the deer clearly shoot it , if its too dark turn your torch on & go home , what the fuck is it with people trying to complicate things .

As @Boaraxa implies, If you can positively identify the deer without artificial lighting I don't see a problem. (public land)

I doubt you would be too far off, if not within the written legislation without looking at the time anyway.