A new “shining” law has gone into effect in Minnesota, aimed at reducing poaching opportunities and minimizing the disturbance of rural residents.

Deer shining is “freezing” deer in bright lights to temporarily immobilize them. Recreational shining is legal at times for viewing wildlife. However, previous statutes made it too easy for people to poach wildlife while posing as recreational shiners, according to Department of Natural Resources officials.

The DNR met with stakeholder groups to determine how to curb abuse.

“Their collective opinion is that deer shining is a statewide problem,” Capt. Rod Smith, a DNR regional enforcement manager, said. “It’s also one of the most common complaints to law enforcement officers.”

Here are details of the new shining law, which took effect Aug. 1, according to a DNR news release:

Shining with firearms, bows

The old law allowed an unloaded and cased firearm or cased bow to be carried in the rear portion of a vehicle while shining. The new law prohibits shining with an artificial light while in possession of a firearm, bow or any other implement that could be used to take wild animals.

Shining without firearms

The old law allowed shining without firearms onto private agricultural or residential property or onto posted property until 10 p.m. from Sept. 1 to Dec. 31, with no time restriction the remainder of the year. The new law removes the Sept. 1 to Dec. 31 provision and allows recreational shining up to two hours past sunset throughout the year.

The old law gave people up to five hours to recreationally shine. That extended period generated complaints among farmers and rural residents, DNR officials said. Law enforcement officers found that the extended period also enabled poachers, giving them more time and cover as recreational shiners to scope out potential areas to poach.

Another change prohibits shining onto residential property or building sites, a common complaint to law enforcement.

The new law also allows a landowner to post agricultural, residential and

nonagricultural property as “no shining.”

An exception in the new shining law allows the retrieval of dead or wounded big game animals past sunset using an artificial light while on foot, as long as the person does not possess a firearm or bow and arrow.

Minnesota wildlife managers should keep deer numbers to a minimum in Northeastern Minnesota but probably can continue holding a limited moose hunting season for the near future, the state’s moose advisory committee reported Tuesday.

The 18-member committee, which for nine months has studied the state’s declining moose population, presented its findings to Minnesota Department of Natural resources officials Tuesday in Duluth.

The state’s Northwestern moose herd collapsed from thousands of animals to just a few dozen in the 1990s, and now mortality rates in Northeastern Minnesota’s moose herd have biologists worried the state may lose the big animal altogether. More moose are dying, and often for reasons not clear to biologists, than is considered safe to continue the population.

Warmer summer and winter temperatures, parasites spread by deer, disease and likely other factors have combined to thwart moose at the southern edge of their natural range, said Rolf Peterson, chairman of the advisory committee and renowned moose researcher at Michigan Technological University.

Peterson said the state’s roughly 7,500 moose are hanging on but that there are “no guarantees’’ they will be around in years to come and “no silver bullet’’ to solve their decline.

Even “the tip of the Arrowhead won’t be such a hospitable place for moose a couple decades down the road,’’ he said.

Moose don’t eat on warm summer days and are left in poorer condition to make it through winter. The trend to warmer winters allows more parasites like ticks to survive and hurt moose. Warmer winters also encourage more deer to live farther north.

Among the recommendations in the advisory committee’s 45-page report:

* Keep deer numbers in Cook, Lake and eastern St. Louis County to fewer than 10 per square mile.

* Continue to allow very limited moose hunting, but end the moose season immediately if low hunter success indicates the population has dropped to critical levels.

* Ban all deer feeding in Northeastern Minnesota.

* Preserve wetlands as sanctuaries from heat stress.

DNR officials said they will consider all options suggested in the report, hold public meetings and form a moose survival or management plan over the next 12 months.

Peterson said if moose numbers continue to decline that deer numbers should be trimmed even farther, eradicating as many deer as possible in the moose’s primary range in the Minnesota Arrowhead.

The recommendations were clear that the few bull moose shot each fall by hunters is not a factor in the downward population trend.

“The committee didn’t see a problem with the continued, very conservative harvest of bulls,’’ he said. “If moose continue to decline, it won’t be because of hunter harvest.’’

Minnesota moose by the numbers