Made my first TIP call yesterday - very disappointing!!

[BLACKJACK]

On the way home yesterday I stopped by a local lake and checked a couple of shore fishermen to see how they were doing. They were doing quite well; they had half a cooler full of sunfish, definitely over the limit. Got home and tried to call the TIP line – busy signal. Tried again a couple of minutes later, it rang and rang and finally a guy answered but said “I’m busy right now, can you call back in 10 minutes?” I mentioned that time was critical, the violators could be leaving. He said I should call the sheriffs office. When I called the sheriff’s office, after a couple of false starts thru their phone tree answering service, I was talking to a real person. She put me on hold several times and finally gave me a phone number to call – the local conservation officer. When I called that number, I got connected to his voice mail and it said if it was an emergency to call the State Patrol and if we were reporting a hunting or fishing violation – call the TIP line!!! So I had been directed in a loop back to TIP!!!!

After leaving a message for the conservation officer about how disappointed I was in the process, I called the TIP line again. This time the guy would talk to me and took down the information and location. Here I thought I was doing my civic duty and it took me 20 minutes of calls and looking up numbers and wading thru phone trees to get it done. What a hassle!!! Next time I’ll just tell the people that they should check the regulations on the limits and be on my way.

[Questor]

Good of you to give it the old college try, though. Thanks.

I haven't called them, but have always been under the impression that the only value is if you can call and identify the perps and give a vehicle license plate or boat number. Conservation officers have much more authority than the police for entering and searching a house. They can then go to the person's house and search for, say, a freezer full of fillets.

Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong about the CO's not requiring a warrant. I was told they don't need one, but that sounds unconstitutional to me.

[LABS4ME]

Blackjack... The TIP deal can be pretty frustrating... tried it once too. What I did instead was to go to the DNR HSOforum and print off the COs phone numbers and write down the ones where I go. Most even had a cell # recorded on the page. I programmed in Tim Grey for Red Lake and Forsberg for Cass Lake. Now there is a new one for Cass that I have yet to get his #... I find this the best route for turning in violators!

Good Luck!

Ken

[LABS4ME]

COs need a warrant. They can ask to search your freezer... if you say no, then they have to get a warrant.

Good Luck!

Ken

[cliffy]

Quote:

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Conservation officers have much more authority than the police for entering and searching a house. They can then go to the person's house and search for, say, a freezer full of fillets.

Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong about the CO's not requiring a warrant. I was told they don't need one, but that sounds unconstitutional to me.

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Cops are Cops..no matter if they are a fish cop or street dweller...same legal rights and constraints apply to everyone...yes they need a search warrant.

[Duck Matt]

Here is a link to CO direct phone numbers for the whole state. Also if you can get boat or liscense plate numbers and give the CO that information, at least if the CO is busy they can be checked later or can keep an eye out for the offenders.

http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/enforcement/phonedirectory.pdf

[sparcebag]

I did the exact same thing when duck hunters were hearding coot and within 60 yds of my house. They shot the coot and my house window,let the coot lay and left.I made all the exact phone calls you did! Finally got the local CO # he was on the other side of his territory! Needless to say I was peeved!

[ChuckN]

I have not been impressed with the TIP line either, with the exact same experiences. I've found that calling the State Patrol regional headquarters dispatch will radio to a CO on duty, relay a message to them and the CO usually calls back. Since CO's are always in the field, their "office" lines more often go unanswered.

The sheriff's department will likely tell you to call State Patrol since the CO's use the SP dispatch/radio system.

[BLACKJACK]

One thing I did learn from this experience is to get more info, I should have written down the car license number so that the CO could at least follow up at a later date. Oh well.

[Daze Off]

Not surprised - I got a similar response a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to contact someone to get a disabled boat on the Mississippi River towed to a landing. I called 911 who shoved me off to Highway Patrol, who shoved me off to County Sheriff, who shoved me off to DNR Water Patrol. Called 911 again and they gave me local marina numbers. Tried local marina's also with no result. Very aggravating - we ended up towing this boat about 7-8 miles up river at a few mph and it took over 3 hours!

The grateful boaters "rewarded" us with an amount of cash that would not even cover the cost of the gas we burned towing them.

Geesh!

Daze Off

[sparcebag]

Daze you should read the US Coastguard,rules and regs about,unprepared,unfit watercraft.911 is emergency,either was they could charge big bucks and fine that boat!

[ozzie]

TIP isn't the greatest resource but it is there to hopefully take care and assist in poaching violations.....I believe they are a volunteer group???? a lot of violations are going on right now if you observe them try and inform individuals yourself without confrontaion.....that is the quickest way to let the law breakers know they are being watched......Good Luck this weekend!!!!!

[IFallsRon]

At least you tried and your conscience is clean. You would have kicked yourself all summer.

[Daze Off]

Sparce -

I know it would have cost them beaucoup bucks but it is their problem not mine. I don't ordinarily mind being a good samaritan but over 3 hrs got pretty tedious and towing an 18' runabout with a Nitro 750 amidst the cruiser and barge wakes was a joy....then to have them stiff my partner was almost too much to bear - was ready to tow them out to the main channel again and set them adrift... I understand the barges but the cruisers who would not come off plane when they could see that you were towing another boat just ticked me off after a while.

I would've taken name and address if I did not have enough cash and sent them a check to cover.

They said they had been tied to that channel marker for 2 hours trying to flag someone down. I think I know why...

Daze Off

[EBass]

It sucks Daze but you did a good deed. Also what goes around comes around and maybe one day you'll need a lift.

I've towed Ron Schara back to his place on the Rum a few years ago. He was sweating so hard trying to get that old motor to fire. He gave me the OK to go as fast as we could but he didn't hook me up wit his daughter he has a new boat now - I did get an autographed calendar!

I've also towed back a run about on the 694 stretch. I guess the guy didn't understand rapids and ruined his prop. Didn't offer any $ - just a thanks.

I've towed back jet skiiers on Medicine to. They'd be the last to fork out cash.

But with my luck one day I'll need a tow - but I will pay the person who helps me out. That's only fair for wasting that person's time and 3.29 a gallon gas.

[Sonicrunch]

[Note from admin: Please read forum policy before posting again. Thank you.]

[Powerstroke]

Its not about the reward. If you're the type to help someone out you're gonna do it anyway. Its nice to be rewarded, but its more about self-satisfaction and helping out another person.

I have used the TIP line once with great results although the best result came from actually speaking with the CO. Now I have the numbers of the CO's in the areas I visit. Get to know them a bit. All of them have cell phones and I have the cell numbers of the ones I might need to contact. All the CO's I know say the office number is for leaving a message and nothing more.

911 is always your best bet if the issue is time sensitive, say needs to be solved within 0-3hrs. If its something that can be dealt with in the near future, but not imperative for NOW, then leave a message or call TIP. I had a hard time getting through on my call at 10pm.

[Zzapp]

DM - you took the thought out of my head - now we need to link a map of the various regions to the directory...

[Mike L]

only an Iowegian would let ya look in an over-limit cooler.

BTW, how many fish were in there?

[FishingRebel]

Quote:

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On the way home yesterday I stopped by a local lake and checked a couple of shore fishermen to see how they were doing. They were doing quite well; they had half a cooler full of sunfish, definitely over the limit. Got home and tried to call the TIP line – busy signal. Tried again a couple of minutes later, it rang and rang and finally a guy answered but said “I’m busy right now, can you call back in 10 minutes?” I mentioned that time was critical, the violators could be leaving. He said I should call the sheriffs office. When I called the sheriff’s office, after a couple of false starts thru their phone tree answering service, I was talking to a real person. She put me on hold several times and finally gave me a phone number to call – the local conservation officer. When I called that number, I got connected to his voice mail and it said if it was an emergency to call the State Patrol and if we were reporting a hunting or fishing violation – call the TIP line!!! So I had been directed in a loop back to TIP!!!!

After leaving a message for the conservation officer about how disappointed I was in the process, I called the TIP line again. This time the guy would talk to me and took down the information and location. Here I thought I was doing my civic duty and it took me 20 minutes of calls and looking up numbers and wading thru phone trees to get it done. What a hassle!!! Next time I’ll just tell the people that they should check the regulations on the limits and be on my way.

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Well, the people that complain about TIP should donate money to the DNR.... DNR funding has always been declining since the late 1990's... I know of soo many DNR people that got laid off since then. So many DNR, for example, fish hatchery in Mn as been closed since the late 1990's. So what happens when they are short in fundings, they can't hire enough people.... Perhaps if people donated money annually, then maybe the DNR ccould employ more workers and next time when you call TIP, you would see some prompt action.

[river rat316]

Quote:

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Well, the people that complain about TIP should donate money to the DNR.... DNR funding has always been declining since the late 1990's... I know of soo many DNR people that got laid off since then. So many DNR, for example, fish hatchery in Mn as been closed since the late 1990's. So what happens when they are short in fundings, they can't hire enough people.... Perhaps if people donated money annually, then maybe the DNR ccould employ more workers and next time when you call TIP, you would see some prompt action.

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Maybe if they didn't spend millions on stocking walleyes in lakes with no natural reproduction to satisfy every Tom Dick and Harry who want to be able to go catch there limit of eyes in the local sloughs and ponds they would have the money to hire people and catch the offenders..... I don't know just my 2 cents

[mnducker]

Sorry to hear about the run around that you got from calling the TIP line. TIP and the DNR are investigating the call and the reponses.

I would like to clarify a few things for all, since this seems to be a hot topic.

TIP is a non profit MN organization, we receive no funding from the state or DNR. We pay for the rewards, advertise the program, and maintain the hotline.

When a call comes in during the weekends or evenings, it goes to the MN state patrol dispatch, during business hours it goes to the DNR dispatch, the local CO on duty is contacted within a few minutes.

We are looking into the call records to see what can be done so this is corrected, I have contacted the DNR to look into the call. Since we are not part of the state we have only limited leverage that we can use, but I can assure you that TIP, the DNR, and the state patrol want the system to work, we have been around 26 years doing this, and sometimes a call falls thru the crack, but we will check it out so it hopefully doesn't happen again.

Good ideas are to have the phone number of your local CO in your area, also the local Sheriffs office, they can also locate and dispatch an officer.

Thanks for posting and letting us know

AL

[Nate McVey]

Thank you Al for the first hand response and for the info. Keep up the good work.

[Sandmannd]

Al, I for one and glad for people like you. I know on our end it gets frustrating at times but please continue to use this service. Even if it only gets through 50% of the time it's still worth the effort. Thanks again Al.

[papabear]

You might be on to something river rat. we spend a hugeamounts of money trying to create opportunities for every person in MN to catch fish and hunt turkey and pheasant even if it is not according to the natural order. Meanwhile how much are we spending to protect wildlife habitat and the wildlife that exist in it. Thanks to everyone that calls TIP and takes the extra steps to get direct numbers to the COs. Hopefuly getting caught or the threat of getting caught will dissuade some from poaching.