Nah, I'm a director for the state association. Id certainly be using them if I believe they are legal and nontargets weren't an issue . There was a big fight to get our snares legalized as it was, well before my time as director, Hal was one of the big movers on this as well as others.
Used to be we had to get additional permission from the landowner to use snares on their property.

Nuisance rules spells it out a bit better and it's clear that you need a nuisance license doing a nuisance job to use kill springs. That came about a few years ago with some nuisance companies wanting to use those for groundhogs in urban areas where they didn't want to risk cages.

Not saying you’re wrong, but my interpretation of the written regs is about opposite of yours. There is no mention of kill springs, they play no part in closing the snare. RAMs would be illegal. And I think most anyone would agree that a cam lock is not a relaxing lock. If Ohio’s definition of a relaxing lock is as you say, where can a person find that? That would be important info to have.

I posted the links to the rules above. And copied the relaxing lock definition directly from those .

I have both on my snares though neither are required here. The locks on caught coyotes were nowhere near the deer stop when cinched down so they are not even a factor for coyote catches in my experience.
BADs however can be. Ive had lots of different makes and styles over the years and they are not all built the same. Some can fail at considerably lower pressure than the stated rating...and vise versa some should have failed and didn't. Neither is foolproof but I'd wager BADs are more effective than stops for deer catches any day. Placement matters too. Fence crawl under for me have proven to be a no no and BADs dont matter in those situations in my opinion.
Be careful and use common sense for placement. Goes farther than any stop or BAD can.

Sorry, I completely missed those links. Honestly their relaxing lock definition defies logic, but its right there in black and white. I’ll be hanging some cam locks today. Thanks.

I would agree on all accounts. Except crawl unders. For the most part I avoid them, but I have some that are all but deer proof because of their location and heavy brush. But I know they aren’t common.

I’ve also found out the hard way that neither a stop or a BAD, or both, will serve their intended purpose in some situations. So my way to “protect” the deer is to avoid the deer. But I still have to stay legal.

I caught 4 deer last year. In 3 cases the BAD did what It's suppose to do. The 4th One we knocked down and got the CR off of It and It went on It's way. All these deer were fawns.

In Arkansas we have to use deer stop at 2.5 inches. And a 1 piece lock both sucks. Wish we could use a cam lock. I have never had a coyote to chew out. But almost had a coon too. Then I went to 1x19 cable.

If you have time to build your own snares look into spools of 1x19 cable you want plus the locks. You can build the snares to the exact dimensions and legality you need.