ORIGINAL: BTBowhunter
Another question for you RSB
Since Turkey was the game involved in roughly one third of the shooting incidents and spring turkey is a morningonly event, that alone may account for some of the difference between the dawn and dusk incident rates.
The info we have here makes it impossible to tell but the idea certainly makes some sense doesnt it?
Do you have acces to the number of spring turkey incidents occuring between starting time and sunrise?
I don’t have anymore information on the hunter related shooting incidents then what you just posted, which is the data I have been using.
I agree that no one really knows just what affect adding another half hour to the end of the shooting hours would have on the hunter safety statistics. All we can do is speculate on the affects based on our own experiences, the statistical data available and some educated theories.
However, since you brought up the need to remove the self-inflicted shooting incidents from the equation I thought I would go ahead and do that.
I agree that you can remove the self-inflicted gunshot wounds from the equation since they certainly didn’t shot them selves in mistake for game or because they were in the line of fire of something they were shooting.
If you remove the self inflicted injuries you are down to 35 hunters being shot by another hunter. That means that 37.1 % of the inflicted by other accidents were victim in the line of fire incidents and that 31.4 % of the inflicted by other incidents were when one hunter shot another in mistake for game. Those two factors mean that about 71.4 % of the time when one hunter shot another it was from either not seeing the other hunter or seeing them and thinking they were a legal animal they were hunting for.
I have to think the number of such incidents would increase if we allow gun hunters to hunt later into the evening.
I would encourage everyone to go out, when there is no snow on the ground and see how dark it is at one half hour after sunset. Have someone put on an orange vest and hat and see how close they have to be before you can see the orange. Then come back and tell me you think the number of hunter related shooting incidents wouldn’t increase during that last hour of the day.
Dick Bodenhorn