Private Property. Keep Out. No Trespassing. These are all signs that your average American inherently understands: This land belongs to someone else, and the public has no right to enter. But to Pennsylvania wildlife officers, those signs rate as suggestions, not strict rules. That’s because Pennsylvania grants its wildlife officers virtually unlimited power to enter private land whenever they please to snoop around for potential hunting violations.
The members of the Punxsutawney and Pitch Pine hunting clubs learned that the hard way, after repeated encounters with officers who roamed their land, watched and interrogated them — and even secretly installed a camera on their land in hopes of catching a hunting violation.
Unfortunately, warrantless intrusions by law enforcement are nothing new. They date back to Prohibition, when federal agents searched private land for illicit stills. In 1924, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the practice, ruling that the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless intrusions onto land. Then, in 2007, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court followed suit, ruling that the state’s Constitution does the same…