It would seem it's been reworded, in a somewhat confusing re-write.
16. Violations and Penalties
The following violations have the listed penalties:
- Hunting before or after legal hours (Section 1) up to 30 minutes--penalty--$100. In excess of 30 minutes–Class B misdemeanor.
- A person afield legally hunting with a firearm in or on a vehicle with a cartridge in the chamber (Section 5) --penalty--$25.
- Use of motor-driven vehicle in a restricted area (Section 5)--penalty--$50.
- Failing to accompany, possessing or transporting another's game animal or parts thereof excluding hides (Section 8)--penalty--$100.
- Hunting with a centerfire rifle in an area closed to centerfire firearms (Section 4)--penalty--$100.
- Use of illegal equipment (Section 4 - Deer Bow season 1b)--penalty--$100.
- Failure to possess the meat tag before being packaged as food or during transportation (Section 7) --penalty--$250.
- Failure to possess or show properly tagged ear, antler or photographs (Section 8) --penalty--$250
Then you go back up to Section 5 and it says:
Motor-driven vehicles may not be used to pursue game. Motor-driven vehicles may not be used to retrieve a big game animal until the animal has been taken into possession and legally tagged.
Now, define "pursue". I suspect the accepted definition of pursue would include just about any activity I do when I arrive in my hunting unit during hunting season. It doesn't have to be running one down with the truck, which is obviously illegal, but simply glassing from an approach on a gravel road could loosely be considered a part of the pursuit of your quarry in the bigger picture. They specifically prohibit driving off trails on NDGF managed lands, same is true of PLOTS without owner permission (technically, PLOTS is walk-in access only), and all other Federal and State owned land have similar restrictions on driving off of established trails.
At one point in time, NDGF included examples of what constituted an acceptable trail in some of their presentations/handouts. Basically, any time the trail had grass growing in the wheel tracks, it was at a minimum questionable. Similarly, there was verbiage on not being allowable to use trails that were there for agricultural purposes. It would be interesting to hear why this has been expressly omitted. I'm guessing NDGF had someone challenge the prohibition on driving off trail on their own land while out looking for a lost calf with a rifle in the back window. Or something like that.
One thing I would say on this is that it seems to put a lot of ambiguity into the ban on driving off trail while hunting. I would have to believe they still plan on ticketing people for it.
