The Pennsylvania Game Commission can use footage from a man’s own game camera to prosecute him in an illegal elk feeding case, a Commonwealth Court panel has ruled.

The decision outlined by Judge Ellen Ceisler overturns an Elk County judge’s ruling that Keith Laskovich’s rights were violated when a wildlife conservation officer seized the camera without a warrant in January 2017.

At the time, the camera was pointing at a group of elk bulls feeding on a pile of corn outside Laskovich’s cabin, Ceisler noted.

This was a case of location, location, location.

When Conservation Officer Jason Wagner seized the camera, it was tied to a tree that bore a white game lands boundary marker, Ceisler noted. Wagner then secured a search warrant before removing the camera’s memory card and viewing the contents

In fighting the seizure, Laskovich called a surveyor who determined that, despite the game lands boundary marker, the tree to which the camera was attached was actually 2.62 feet inside Laskovitch’s property line.

County Judge Richard A. Masson then ordered the evidence from the camera suppressed due to an illegal seizure. That’s when the game commission appealed to Commonwealth Court.

Ceisler overturned Masson’s ruling after concluding the fact that the camera was barely inside Laskovich’s property line “is immaterial.”

“Wagner’s reliance on the boundary line stripe painted on the tree was not unreasonable. An inadvertent trespass does not render an enforcement officer’s seizure of property unreasonable,” she wrote.

The camera was in “plain view” of Wagner, who was on state game lands, and he had probable cause to believe the device was filming evidence of a crime, Ceisler found.