RealAudio

The warm winter brought the ice fishing season to an end a little early this year, and anglers spent the week dragging the last of their ice shacks off of lakes around the state. The shacks may disappear for another year, but a controversy surrounding them will not.

	Without being able to enter, Officer Bruce Hall relies on looking in windows, probing under shacks for fishing lines, and the continued cooperation of most anglers. (MPR Photo/Jeff Horwich)

A court decision in the middle of the season declared that ice shacks were a private space, protected by the U.S. Constitution from unwarranted searches. It's a big change that has put the Department of Natural Resources in a tough position.

Just as before, DNR officer Bruce Hall drives his ATV from shack to shack over the flat, white expanse of Lake Mille Lacs. Hall makes plenty of friends out here, but he's not knocking on doors to make courtesy calls. He's looking for people breaking the rules, including dangling lines in the water when they're not actually in the ice house.

"Here's a good situation where my gut would probably tell me that there's lines down inside that house," he says, as he circles a shack with the curtains drawn tight. "Windows are all closed, it's locked from the outside. More often than not, if I would get into that house, there would be some lines down and that would be a violation.

"Prior to December I would open that door and go in," he says.

Prior to December fishing in an ice shack was just as public as sitting on an upturned bucket. DNR officers would announce their presence with a quick knock, and step through the door. Whatever they saw was fair game.

But two court decisions - both from Rice County - have changed things. In one case, a conservation officer surprised two men smoking crack. In the other, a man was caught with marijuana and an extra line in the water.

	Ice shacks lined up to come in near the end of the season on Mille Lacs near Wahkton. (MPR Photo/Jeff Horwich)

In both cases the state Court of Appeals found ice shack-dwellers have a reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment.

Things have certainly gotten more complicated for Hall. "We have to rely on real specific information, we have to have witnesses that are involved, it takes time and you have to get probable cause for search warrants, you have to find a judge available on weekends. It's nearly impossible...these days."

So it's hard to detect any illegal activity, whether it's drugs or the much more common fishing violations Hall is really out there to spot. And that's just fine with Paul Levasseur of Elk River.

	This ice shack left plenty of evidence lying outside in plain view, including litter, improper shack identification and a dozen discarded fish. (MPR Photo/Jeff Horwich)

"I just don't like going fishing and having handcuffs on my hands while I'm fishing," he says as he stands in the door of his shack on Mille Lacs. "So every time you catch a nice fish, you've got to throw it back."

Levasseur says he's been fishing out here 20 years, and he does follow the rules. But to him and his kids, the shack on Mille Lacs feels very much like his house, his car or any other private space.

"You know you can hear somebody coming (from inside the shack)," he says, "But yeah, if it was a game warden, he could wait right at the door and I'd wave at him through the window: 'Hi!' But he can't come in, so that's fine with me."

Just next door, which on Mille Lacs means a few thousand yards down the ice, Marv Thorsten of Foley thinks the court decision is silly. He's says he's sitting on public waters, and DNR has a job to do.

	Marv Thorsten, left, chats with a friend outside his shack on one of the last days of the season. Thorsten has been fishing here 45 years. (MPR Photo/Jeff Horwich)

"I feel that if you're violating, you should get caught," he said. "Whether the game warden can come in or not, that don't bother me, you know...They always knocked before they came in anyway. And they didn't just rip the door open. They'd knock. But like I say it didn't bother me, and it still don't bother me. "

The case may wind up in the state Supreme Court. In the meantime the DNR is thinking of different ways to enforce its own rules.

One possible solution: entering ice shacks on so-called "administrative warrants," the easier-to-obtain civil warrants used by building inspectors. This would entail significant changes; DNR officers would need to change the citations they issue from criminal citations to civil citations. But it just might fly, given that the law has now said a house and an ice shack might not be all that different after all.