Ground Blinds

[fabsroman]

On the first day of gun season, the wife and I were driving to Costco along I-270 with fields on both sides. I could see hunters in blaze orange in several of the fields and then happened to notice a ground blind along the edge of a road right amongst some trees. Of course, the ground blind didn't have any orange on it.

Today, I started thinking about how unsafe that could be. If you are in a ground blind because you are worried about the deer being so close that they can see you, I think you should also be worried about another hunter shooting you when the deer is that close to you.

Hang a blze orange piece of tape, or something to that effect, on all four sides of that blind. We all like to think that accidents will not happen to us, but I read enough about them to know that they happen to everybody. Lets all try to avoid them. The deer cannot see the blaze orange. Obviously, blaze orange won't work when hunting turkey or waterfowl, but high power rifles and slug guns aren't being used then either (i.e., the range is a lot less and it is easier to see a ground blind at 40 yards versus 200 to 300 yards).

The more I think about that ground blind, the more I remember a guy poaching deer in a ghillie suit during gun season. I kept wondering why the bush was moving when there was no wind of any sort and of course figured it was because a deer was pulling on it from the other side. At the time, I didn't own binos, so I brought the gun up and looked through it. Of course, the gun had a round in the chamber. I never saw a deer, but eventually I did see the flourescent fletching on his arrows. That almost made me sick and it made me understand how accidents can and do happen to everybody.