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12-19-2007 | 05:53 AM

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Hunter killed by Poacher

http://www.kansas.com/275/story/257424.html

Student killed while hunting
BY MICHAEL PEARCE
The Wichita Eagle

An 18-year-old college student was shot and killed while goose hunting Saturday morning in northern Lyon County.

The Lyon County Sheriff's Department identified the victim as Beau Arndt of Americus, a freshman at Emporia State University.

Arndt and two friends had placed several dozen goose decoys in a field and were lying in the snow dressed in white when a pickup stopped along a nearby road and fired a rifle shot into the decoys, striking Arndt.

Arndt was pronounced dead at the scene. His hunting companions said the truck left the scene slowly after the shot was fired.

The sheriff's department is asking for help locating a late-1970s model orange and red Ford pickup believed to have a Shawnee County license plate. Witnesses told authorities the pickup had four occupants.

Authorities speculate the shooter mistook the decoys for real geese. Shooting waterfowl with a rifle is illegal in Kansas. The shooter also broke the law by shooting from within a vehicle and shooting onto the property without the landowner's permission.

Wayne Doyle, of the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, said Arndt's death is the first hunting fatality in Kansas since 2005. Annually, about 275,000 Kansas hunters log more than 3 million days afield. Doyle said they average less than one fatality a year.

"So far this year I think we've had 11 (non-fatal) accidents reported," Doyle said. "When you consider how much time's spent hunting, that's a very insignificant number, but it's certainly not insignificant to those involved. This is sad. It's tragic."

He said most of Kansas' hunting fatalities come from unsafe gun handling, like removing a loaded firearm from a gun case or vehicle while on a hunting trip. Two within the past 15 years involved unsupervised young children carrying firearms afield without parental permission.

Doyle said Arndt's death was the first fatality involving goose hunters and a passing vehicle he's heard of in Kansas, though the department receives frequent complaints of poachers driving back roads and illegally shooting at game from their vehicles.

Several years ago a South Dakota goose hunter was shot and killed while hiding amid goose decoys. The rifle shot was fired by the man who'd given him permission to hunt the property. The landowner said he mistook the decoys for live geese and fired the shot hoping to spook them from his grain field.

Randy Smith, a friend of Arndt's family, spoke highly of the young hunter.

"You couldn't ask for a better kid," Smith said. "He was big into waterfowl hunting, fishing, deer hunting. Outdoors is where he always wanted to be. He had a really bright future ahead of him."

Smith said word spread quickly around Americus, a small town near Emporia.

Condolences have also been posted on several online hunting sites. Smith said sportsmen are frustrated that Arndt was hunting legally and killed by an illegally fired bullet.

"It's being called a hunting accident but that bullet was fired by a poacher," Smith said. "Hunting had nothing to do with it. There's no way it should have happened."

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