Five Idaho hunters died accidentally during
last year’s hunting season, the highest number of fatalities for
the sport since 1982, says a report from the Idaho Fish and Game
Department. Since the fall accidents, a member of one victim’s
hunting party has vowed to see Idaho implement a law that would
require hunters to wear blaze orange clothing.
A
bill introduced into the Idaho Legislature in 1988 would have done
that, but it met with so much opposition that Don Clower, former
head of the Idaho Hunter Education Association, says he doubts the
state’s Game Commission will push a hunter-orange law
again.
“If you live in the West, you understand
that people resent the government telling you what to do,” Clower
says, “and a number of sportsmen resented the government telling
them what to wear. They saw it as punishing the victim instead of
the perpetrator.” Clower had supported the
bill.
Since the 1988 defeat, the Idaho Fish and
Game Department’s official stance has been to educate hunters about
safety instead of advocating more legislation. Since Idaho passed a
law in 1980, requiring all hunters born after 1975 to go through a
hunter education course, the rate of fatal hunting accidents has
dropped from 7.9 per season to 1.9.
“I think this
year is really just an anomaly,” says Ed Mitchell of Idaho Fish and
Game.
But Dan Papp, coordinator of the state’s
hunter education program, says older hunters who haven’t been
through the education courses are still vulnerable to
accidents.
Making all hunters wear orange, he
says, would save lives.
Copyright © 2000 HCN and Ali Macalady
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Hunter orange is a long shot.
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