What Woodchukhnter wrote brought to mind an incident during spring turkey some years ago. I was in the local rescue squad and we got a call for a man who was missing while hunting. We walked over the area where he was supposed to be for two days, and could not find him, because he was in a ghillie suit and was lying in a small ditch. I probably walked within a few feet of him several times. He was only 43, but had died of a heart attack.
Another incident was in Tennessee, where I was hog hunting in open woods in the fall. I was in full camo, as I was hunting at a lodge and had gone out alone with a guide. I sat down on a hillside and the guide was looking for sign. He was not 20 yards from me and did not see me until I moved, even though he watched me sit down.
A neighbor who is dead now told me of seeing a man dove hunting on his property. The man was sitting still on a stump at the edge of some woods. A buck came out of the woods and sniffed at the back of the man's coat, but the man never realized the deer was there. The deer hung around for several minutes before heading back into the woods. The man had kept still the whole time, so the deer was not spooked by his scent or what he was wearing. Deer are much more oriented to sound or movement than to any color that we use while hunting.
While there is no perfect way to protect yourself while in the field, if you drive more than a few yards, the risk of death or injury from a car accident outweighs your risk while hunting.
Statistically, your eight-year-old is at greater risk of injury while riding a bicycle around the neighborhood than you are of being injured while hunting.
A bad hunter will blame his equipment for his failure to get game, rather than admit that he needs to brush up on his hunting skills. If it isn't the blaze orange, it's the ammo, or the rifle, or his socks were too tight. The thing is, without identifying the real cause of his lack of success, he will never get any better. Hard to correct an error if you aren't willing to own up to it.
I'll stick with blaze orange, even where it is not the law. I don't see that it bothers the game and it makes others able to see me instead of just blazing at some motion or noise.
