Hunter safety has improved thanks in part to kids knowing laws, correct formBy Howard Meyerson, The Grand Rapids Press, found at MLive.com
January 03, 2010, 7:10AMI shot my first squirrel at 16. I was camping with friends and borrowed a .22 rifle. We hunted as casually as we plinked bottles and cans. We were suburban kids from Detroit. We didn’t know gun laws or hunting rules and regulations. Sporting ethics were unheard of. You just got a gun and hunted. Or so we thought.
Of course, in 1950, according to state records, 25 people were shot and killed during the hunting season. Another 190 hunters were involved in firearm accidents, which means they either accidently shot themselves or someone else.
That’s an incredible number of people to get hurt, and worse, while doing something they enjoy. But things were a lot looser then. The state was not as involved in making hunting safer as it would be in future years.
Hunter safety courses wouldn’t become mandatory for 12- to 16-year-olds until 1971. By then, we were in college, thinking of other things. My shooting interest had turned to pistols on an indoor range or trap on an open farm field. And the requirement that hunters wear a bright, visible orange garment wasn’t required until ’77.
I am glad to say it has made a difference. The Department of Natural Resources announced last week that this year’s deer season was the safest in Michigan on record. There were no fatalities. There were 12 accidents during the entire hunting season and one fatality during the spring turkey hunting season.
Last year, there were two fatalities, one during the waterfowl season and one during deer season.
The 20 firearm accidents occurred during deer, waterfowl and small game seasons with rifles, shotguns and pistols.
There were two fatalities in 2007 and 30 accidents — a tough number to swallow given the years we have had hunter safety and hunter orange rules, but it was better than 2006 when we had four fatalities and 31 non-fatal accidents. In 2000, there were seven fatalities and 190 accidents.
Sgt. Jon Wood, DNR hunter education program supervisor, said in a news release that Michigan has seen a continued drop in hunter casualty incidents since the implementation of hunter education and mandatory hunter orange laws.
There is no question it has made a difference, along with the push among older hunters to practice safe hunting.
In 1970, there were 18 fatalities and 212 accidents. The new laws came on the books, and by 1990, fatalities had dropped to nine and the number of accidents to 107.
My uncle Denny’s lesson wouldn’t make sense for a number of years, not until I matured as a shooter/hunter. Perhaps the same is true for the benefits of Michigan’s hunting safety rules.
Young hunters are trained in the correct way to do things early on and grow up with them as second nature. Keep your gun’s muzzle pointed in a safe direction, treat every firearm as if it were loaded, and so on.
These are rules they will pass on to their children who hunt, unlike those of us from an earlier generation who had to figure things out slowly and for ourselves.
I am glad to know, going into the new year, those lessons pay off.
E-mail Howard Meyerson at hmeyerson@grpress.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/HMeyerson
http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2010/01/hunter_safety_has_improved_--.html
