To all Tejon rifle hunters

[Buck-eye]

HEY WAIT A MINUTE! Is this an ploy by Jesse to sell overstocked blaze orange hats?

It is conversations like this one that keep my wife worried about my hobby as a hunter. It really is a shame when guys use hunting as an excuse to go out and get sh** faced, and break all of the rules. Guys like us however, do our best to keep each other safe while enjoying a weekend hunt. Ill say this right now, I aint paying $300 to get fired upon. If you cannot adhere to ethical hunting, dont ruin everyone else's trip. How's that for a simple can do? Sounds to me however like we all might be better off dressed like a pig. I havent heard any stories of these banana heads killing one.

 

[fairchase]

Where I come from it is unlawful to shoot from or across not only roads but their shoulders and embankments. Also it's unlawful to hunt game from a motor vehicle unless you have a handicapped person's hunting permit.
Is it any different in California?

BTW, most hunting accidents happen while getting in and out of your vehicle, regardless of where and when you do your shooting. Everyone please take a little extra care when your climbing in and out of your rig.
Just think of accidently discharging your firearm into a best friend, family member or even a stranger and trying to live the rest of your life...sobering thought.

 

[Speckmisser]

Fairchase,

On private land in CA, you can shoot non-game animals (like ground squirrels) from a vehicle. Game animals may NOT be taken from a motorized vehicle of any kind unless you are handicapped (and certified as such by DFG).

Shooting from the right of way, onto, or across any public road is also verboten.

 

[hronk]

freedivr2: Not arguing for or against, Maybe you can answer my question. Is it not true that Ca. has one of the lowest if not the lowest fatalities in hunting related accidents. Also aren't hunter ratio to non fatal accidents on the low end compared to the other 49 states. I know, 1 accident is to many and no one wants to get hurt. Just a question.....hronk

 

[Buck-eye]

hronk,

I am not sure on hunting fatalities in relation to accidents in CA. If it is low, that is encouraging. The one disturbing thing to me is that we are going to a place in which people have been seen repeatedly being unsafe. That puts an extra hint of caution in to the hunt.

 

[Freedivr2]

First, I repeat that no matter where you hunt in California (Tejon or otherwise), it is NOT a good idea to mix archers and rifle hunters in the field at the same time. That was the brunt of this post and I was purty suprised that Tejon allows that situation to exist. Accident waiting to happen, IMHO.

Great question re; how Hunter safety per 1,000 hunters compares to other states.
The answer is, YES, California does in fact have a lower per 1,000 hunter fatality rate than most state. There's a lot of reasons for that, one I'd like to think our safety programs and more informed hunters out in the field. Another being that a lot of hunters in California are hunting hogs or deer on private lands and in more controlled situations, and we have few out-of-state hunters (who haven't gone through a stringent a H.E. course as we have here).

Most of the hunter accidents (ok, incidents, as there's no such thing as a hunting accident; they're all caused by human error) in California are, as I said, hunters swinging on game, and the highest number of incidents involve quail, dove and pheasant hunts. We've had only a couple of fatalities in the past 10 years in California, one being a deer hunter shot near Frazier Park just a couple years ago(case still open as far as I know), and another was last year, a shotgun (bird hunting) incident last year. Prior to that, we hadn't had a fatality here for about the past 10 years, and the Dept. has been darn proud of that statistic and of the hunters that are out in the field today.

Sometime in the near future I'll scan the metrics I have and a couple incident reports and post em up for you guys......

As far as shooting off a road here in California.........that's a great question also. Yep, it's illegal to shoot from a vehicle, from or across a road. But a question comes up now and then in my classes of "how far off the road do you have to be to shoot"? This question was asked of the Warden instructor when I was taking the instructors course way back when, and the wardens (Gordon Poppit and Rick Wheeler) were stumped for the answer, believe it or not. In fact, their first answer was 10 feet (which was a total arbitrary answer, not found in the code anywhere). After they checked and we discussed it, we found that the answer is; one footstep off the road is legal as long as you don't shoot across the road. I guess that's good news for roadhunters.......

Back to the main point.........like I said, blaze orange is the cheapest life insurance you can buy for yourself when you're out in the field. I'll post up those hunter accident metrics sometime next week. Stay tuned............

 

[archer4evr]

Sorry freedivr, and I might be wrong. But archers legally can & will hunt with a bow in ANY rifle season, almost everywhere. Both need to be extra carefull. From now on, including this weekend, I will be hunting Tejon with a bow, with orange cap on. I hope everyone takes that extra second to look around their target b4 they unload.

 

[F350]

Definately comes down to one of the basics; KNOW your backstop.

I've been hunting where other hunters weren't even supposed to be there but started shooting. For that reason, I keep a blaze orange plastic safety vest rolled up in my pack. The Orange is for my safety, not thiers.

As far as public land hunts are concerned, you can bet that both me and my son will have orange on.

Oh and freedivr...Thanks for taking the time to provide the extra safety.

 

[Freedivr2]

De nada, F350.

Archer4evr, you're absolutely right, no question (about being able to hunt archery concurrent with rifle, as allowed by law). I don't have any question about the legality about it, just the safety aspect of that situation. Archery guys, who have my highest respect (you guys are both tough and amazing in so many ways.......sitting in a tree, letting a hornet sting you and not even flinching because a deer might be in the area, stuff like that) need the camo big time (as you know). The majority of deer hunters, and in particular NEW deer hunters, are rifle hunters. There's the scary part for a guy clad in complete camo (as I wish we all could be......in a perfect world, we could be dang it......) with a new rifle hunter out there.

Here's a suggestion that you might consider that is kinda a compromise. It's not the blaze orange that get's the deer's attention (they're color blind as you know), but the 2 ft. solid square patch of orange (or any color), uninterrupted. Kinda like a flag out there. In nature, there's few things out there that are solid like that except predators and square rocks (?), so that's what gets the deers attention. What I suggest is something that isn't allowed in Colorado or Utah, but you can do in California. Break up the pattern of your camo by either buying camo blaze orange or simply using a sharpie on an orange hat and/or vest to add some black spots to it. See photo, below, vest on the right....it's the vest I use when deer hunting in Calif.

Oh yeah.........if there's ANY further questions from anyone on what the Dept. of Fish and Game position is on using blaze orange while hunting, be sure to either read my lips or the words on the vest on the left, provided to me 5 years ago by the Dept. of Fish and Game, for use in our Hunter Ed. Classes. Nuff said.............

 

[archer4evr]

Thanks Freedivr2, wearing a orange basesball cap backwards from now on. Good hunting!

 

[Freedivr2]

Hey, just curious.........what's with the backwards baseball cap thing (not my generation kinda thing....)? Protecting the back of the neck from sun or what? No offense as to each his own, but it just always looked kinda dorky to me....

 

[archer4evr]

Cant speak for the fashion part but for me its 2 reasons. First, turning the hat around offers more blaze orange facing the direction the bullets will be coming from and two, when at come to
full draw(I shoot fingers) the string will not contact the brim of the hat.

 

[Freedivr2]

I get it. Thanks for the "heads up" on that........

 

[lostagain]

I agree on wearing the blaze orange and an orange hat seems to work best for me since when I walk in the tall bush I seem to see other hunters heads moving before I see their chests.

Did I misread the note when it said the hunters were shooting out of a "MOVING" vehicle??? They might as well had an open six pick just to round off the offenses.