Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!doug.cae.wisc.edu!osnome.che.wisc.edu!hunting
From: tomfal@tr6.wes.army.mil (Tom Faller)
Newsgroups: rec.hunting
Subject: Re: Hunting "Accidents"
Message-ID: <1991Jun4.093436.19567@doug.cae.wisc.edu>
Date: 4 Jun 91 14:34:35 GMT
Lines: 51
Approved: hunting@osnome.che.wisc.edu
Originator: hunting@osnome.che.wisc.edu

I think that John DeArmond has a great idea for training novices to hunt --
letting them go through the motions with an empty gun. We run through a 
similar sequence when teaching young people to drive - letting them get the 
feel of the wheel in a big empty parking lot at slow speed, and running past
pylons instead of other cars or property. I wish I had been taught this way
before my first hunt.
I spent my teen years in rural Alabama, having moved from the gameless
suburban North around Buffalo. I don't even remember seeing rabbits as a
child. When I was fourteen, my best friend, who had been hunting a couple of
times with his grandfather, decided to take me along for rabbit hunting. I
knew which end of the gun was forward, and how to load and unload it, but I
had never been in the field before. 
He took a single-barreled 20 ga. and I took a bolt-action .22. We were dropped
by his grandfather on a dirt road in the county, and pointed in a general 
direction. My friend went in front, I was in back, slightly to one side, with 
the rifle in my hands. About twenty minutes into the hunt, a flock of small
birds explosively broke cover in front of us. In surprise, we both raised our
guns and pulled the triggers. His delayed shot missed all the birds. I pulled
my trigger, and the safety prevented me from shooting him in the back.
I had pretty much done everything the wrong way, walking around with finger
in trigger guard, not thinking about having him in front of me, and not being
prepared for the sudden surprise of real game. We both survived by luck, but
I unloaded the gun right away, to my friend's protest (I didn't tell him why),
and carried it back that way. 
It took me several years before I carried a gun again, and this time, 
forewarned by knowledge, I tried it unloaded first. I find that in giving
myself "room to be stupid" first, I can evaluate my actions easier, and work
out bad habits. There's still no cure for surprise, but I've found that you can "accident-proof" yourself to a great degree by knowing that certain actions
predispose you to greater risk. Keeping your finger off the trigger and out of
the trigger guard is probably the easiest way to keep from accidentally
jerking off a shot. This works in other areas, like driving and using power
tools or big knives. A little forethought goes a long way.

On the matter of Blaze Orange, I think that it's a good idea, even if everyone
else in the woods were a good hunter, because it addresses the question of
how do you know what's in your own backstop? You don't have to be mistaken for
a deer to be accidentally shot. All you have to do is blend in with the woods.
What if you had a shot, and you noticed an orange-clad hunter in a tree stand
across the valley, but just over the shoulder of the deer in your scope? You'd
probably not have noticed him without the color, as he wouldn't be moving.
As long as it makes no difference to the deer, hunters should use it. I know
that it ruins the esthetics of the hunt,( 1/2 :-) ), but with a lot of hunters
in the woods, it's practically a necessity.

Speaking of mistaken i.d., was it on this list that it was reported that some
guy fired shots at a man and his wife, "mistaking them for game"? He hit the
man, but was driven off by the man "firing several shots from a pistol to
summon help". Right. Remember, Smokey says, "Only you can prevent Firefights!".

Tom Faller