While I am not opposed to wearing blaze orange in general, I think that when most hunters wear it some hunters relax and don't identify their target and what lies beyond it carefully. Their thinking is that if they don't see orange, it is safe to shoot. We don't have a mandatory blaze orange requirement in spring gobbler season, nor should we. A mature gobbler knows that blaze orange means "hunter." What we should have is criminal prosecution for shooting someone "in mistake for game." I will grant that there are some incidents that qualify as accidents, such as a bullet striking someone at some distance as a result of a ricochet. Such incidents are few and very far between. Most incidents in which one hunter shoots another result from carlessness.

I wrote a short story some years ago about a guy who wanted to get rid of a hunting partner that was having an affair with his wife. He shot the guy, plead guilty to shooting a person in mistake for game, paid a fine, and lost his license for ten years. Later, when someone suspected that he had killed his buddy intentionally, it was too late. Double jeopardy, you know.

I'll bet that if a person who killed another person while hunting had to do felony manslaughter time, we would have many more careful hunters. Felony convictions remove the individual's right to own firearms of any type. I am not sure we want someone who is this careless to own firearms anyway.