Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 12, 1990 TAG: 9006120420
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B4 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Bill Cochran
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
During the past two hunting seasons, all three of the state's hunting fatalities where the victim was mistaken for game involved turkey hunters. No longer is the deer season the big killer of hunters.
Blaze orange, which has been required by law during the deer season since 1987, has made the difference, says Capt. Herb Foster, hunter-safety coordinator for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
"The fatalities have just been dropping off ever since blaze orange was enacted," Foster said.
Foster isn't suggesting that since blaze orange is working for deer hunters it also should be mandatory for turkey hunters. He is saying that turkey hunting must be made safer. The alternative is to risk having legislators impose their solutions on hunters.
During the current accident reporting period, which is from July 1 through June 30, there has been just one confirmed hunting fatality, a remarkably low figure in Virginia's 30 years of record keeping.
That death involved one turkey hunter shooting another. On a fall hunt, the victim was struck by two 00-buckshot pellets by a hunter who pulled his trigger on sound and movement, thinking it was a turkey.
The season before, there were two spring gobbler season deaths, the result of hunters mistaking someone for game.
The year before that, there were three mistaken-for-game fatalities, all involving deer hunters who weren't complying with the new blaze-orange requirement.
Now here's the startling summary.
"Every one of those mistaken-for-game fatalities - the one this season, the two last season, the three the year before - all the victims were wearing brown and green camouflage," said Foster. "Every last one of them. That, to me, is significant."
Foster knows it is next to impossible to get turkey hunters to wear blaze orange, because they are dealing with such a keen-sighted animal when it comes to picking up movement. What does work, he said, is to tie an orange vest or sash around the tree above a hunter's calling position.
The victim of last fall's turkey-hunting incident was killed by a 43-year-old man who said he had 30 years of hunting experience. No green novice here. No youngster. Yet he was shooting at sound and movement. And he was making a second mistake: Shooting buckshot.
"That's another problem," said Foster. "The use of buckshot is absolutely inappropriate for turkey hunting. A number of turkey hunters killed over the past few years were killed with buckshot. It is absolutely ridiculous."
Had the hunter been using the smaller No. 6s or even No. 4s, the victim may have gotten by with a painful peppering.
"I am the last guy in the world who wants to see a new law created," Foster said. "But what's the answer? If we can just get people to stop putting buckshot into their guns when they are hunting turkeys and if we can get them to tie a blaze orange vest or sash to the tree from where they are calling, we could save lives."
by CNB