HB 939: Regulates using equipment for the Taking of Wildlife (2026)
Summary: Regulates the use of thermal imaging, night vision, transmitting trail cameras, and drones for hunting while making exemptions for predators and agricultural purposes.
ICL’s Position: Oppose
Current Bill Status: To Governor
Issue Areas: Wildlife, Hunting
House Bill 939 amends Idaho Code section 36-1101 relating to equipment used for the legal taking of wildlife. In 2024, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission directed IDFG staff to organize and facilitate a citizen’s working group to address the use of new and emerging technologies in the pursuit of game species. The Hunting and Advanced Technology (HAT) Working Group assessed public perspectives about implications to “fair chase” ethics from the use of advanced technologies such as thermal imaging, night vision, drones and transmitting trail cameras.
Public discussions about whether and how to restrict these advanced technologies related only to the pursuit and harvest of elk, deer, moose, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and/or mountain goats. Predatory game animals like wolves, mountain lions and bears were not included in those deliberations. The group made recommendations to IDFG on which technologies to limit in order to preserve the integrity of Idaho’s “fair chase” sporting experience. Later, the Commission voted to also prohibit those technologies to pursue and/or take predatory big game animals.
IDFG passed along a set of proposed rules to the Legislature related to use of those certain technologies toward the beginning of the session. However, due to opposition from a subset of the sporting public that didn’t want limitations on methods to reduce numbers of wolves and mountain lions, the Legislature drafted a bill on the issue with new provisions. The resulting legislation does follow IDFG’s recommendations to curtail or prohibit use of advanced technologies for game species, but also allows use of those technologies to pursue wolves, mountain lions and other predatory animals—as defined in Idaho Code. It also allows use of advanced technologies to retrieve wounded game animals and monitor traps—provisions not included in IDFG’s proposed rules.
ICL stood behind the good intentions of the HAT working group to protect the ethics-based, sporting interests of Idahoans. However, we have major concerns about the enforceability of this new code and the potential for it to be a pathway for new technologies to further reduce wolf and mountain lion populations. We appreciate Representative Petzke’s efforts to move this conversation forward. But we’re concerned that HB 939 risks the appearance of diminishing the exhaustive, yearlong public input process of the Advanced Technologies citizens workgroup.
