doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Clothing

I agree 100% I have had to wear orange while hunting. And I hate it. I think if you cant discerne between another hunter an whatever it is that your hunting then you dont ever need to think about touching a firearm. But then you have to understand the average hunters mentality in this country. and i hope this doesnt affend anyone who reads it, and if it does, tuff! The average hunter in the states only hunts two months out of the year and then they only hunt dear, becouse for some reason it is the considered opinion that it is more difficult and sporting to sit in a hide spot and shoot something the size of a small horse then to hunt pheasant or other fowl or small game. Deer season is the one time in the year that i stay out of the woods becouse deer hunters usually only pick up ther guns durring this time of year and are the some of the most dangerous people with a firearm that i have ever seen.

David,
Yes, I agree. Gunshot wounds are always reported and well doc'd.

I put "road crew" vest over one of several earthy-colored (you know, boring and tasteless :D) jackets I already own, and blaze-0 'Rascher' band on my hat. Why waste money on Guccimo?
PS. One is blue Burberry's 'car coat' and one is black DKNY wool jacket (very slimming) , so they're not all fashion disasters.

Here in Pa. you are required to wear 250 square inches of blaze orange 360 deg. around your body along with a blaze orange hat small game hunting. Turkey hunting, a blaze orange hat to your hunting spot, you can remove it, but you are supposed to put a blaze orange band around a tree 15 yards from your location. Some of the other regulations here I would have to get the manual and it is too lengthy to write or understand, need a interpreter to deciper.

The fear that deer hunters are somehow way more unsafe than all others is simply not supported in the data. All big-game hunting injuries account for 47% of the total, while small-game hunting accounts for 53%. These numbers account for all types of injuries, not just those involving firearms. The big-game hunting injury statistics include falls from tree stands while climbing/descending and failure to wear a safety belt.

Chuck H. You brought up an interesting post about Hunter Safety Coarses. You are right in most states I know you have to go to classes in order to get your license. Growing up in New Jersey, buy the age of 14 you were allowed to hunt if you passed the coarse, whether it be for shotgun or bowhunting or both. You had to produce the Hunter Safety Coarse card to the issuing license dealer in order to receive a license. In renewing your license you had to show a previous license and they wrote the number on the new license. If you didn't show an old license you didn't get a new one.
In the service in Germany, 1966-1967, I was very fortunate to hunt with a German fellow who worked on post as a fireman. His family owned quite a bit of land not to far from where I was stationed, next town. It all started with my purchase of a Remington 11-48, in a .410 from the Rod & Gun Club. He said I wouldn't be able to kill anything with it. To make a long story shorter, he invited me to hunt on his families property, with his dad (During WW11 was in the SS), son and myself in the morning for ducks, hares, afternoon hunt with a group of people, hunting hungarian partridge, pheasants. Told me that if anyone asked about my license, that I had one. I found out later that it takes up to 6 months to get a license, and you need to have at least 400 acres to hunt. You have to have a dog, and it must retrieve everyting. If there is water on the property, it must retrieve from in the water. Government officials test the dogs. All the game shot goes to the landowner and if you want some, you have to buy it from them.
Hunted more than once and did kill everything from hares, up to 10 lbs, hungarian partridge and pheasants. Wouldn't let me shoot any Roe Buck with the .410, too small. The father shot a drilling and my friend shot a Franchi auto 20. I first had problems with the Belgian made paper shells cycling in the .410, finally had to scape the wax from them to cycle.

I agree with David. The only hunting accident in which friends were involved was a Pheasant hunter being to eager and not watching his blockers. He won't be invited back.

Dig, back to the original question for a minute, it is difficult to compare the UK with the US per se. Really what you must do is compare the UK with each state in the US because each has its own traditions and hunter visibility requirements. Indeed, in some states those requirements vary depending upon whether one is talking about private or public land. I have had the opportunity to hunt both in Germany (a lot) and the UK (a little) and in both settings the traditions, limited access to hunting areas, and the highly controled methods of the hunt itself make high visibility clothing of limited value. The situation is quite different and varried here.

I suppose, we really have two broad movements in this country that have affected current "rules" on attire. Depending upon which a state has embraced, it has driven the amount of regulation imposed upon the hunter. With regard to big game, I suppose Texas would represent one extreme, and perhaps Pennsylvania another. Texas has a tradition of private land ownership and "ownership" of the game on that property. There is very little public land available and the lease system, owned by individuals, clubs (syndicates in British parlance), or commercial hunting companies prevails. The seasons are fairly long, the selectivity of the harvest is generally quite high, and as a result the "nanny" factor is quite low in Texas, and there are essentially no hunter orange requirements. Pennsylvania, on the other hand, has worked hard to provide lots of public land with lots of deer, for lots of hunters, taking a huge harvest, and with very little time to complete it. As a result, the management/oversight factor is very high and hunter orange is a prescribed uniform.

Hunter orange is a somewhat different issue for small game, and again varies from state to state. My unoficial survey would say that most of it is worn voluntarily. Most of this shooting is "rough shooting" on ground that is often very rough indeed. I often hunt quail and pheasant with friends who are as experienced bird hunters as one could ever hope to join up with at the south end of a pointer. In Kansas and Oklahoma we are not required to wear hunter orange but we do; not because anyone is remotely unsafe, but because flushing birds and high, thick brush would give even Lord Rippon a bad day (ask our Vice President).

With the disclaimer that no generality is true about a country as large and historically diverse as the US, our dual traditions have also driven the development of hunting clothing. Prior to the depression hunting clothing trended toward what we now think of as traditional canvas shooting jackets, lace boots, and weather dependent hats. If you look at the old photos, it is remarkable how many nimrods, even among what we would now call the middle class, were wearing ties as they uncased their L.C. Smiths and Parkers. At the same time a larger group of Americans were hunting in whatever servicable clothing they had for both recreation and subsistance. These were the largely rural families who made up most of our poulation until WW II. That subsistance notion gained traction with the coming of the depression. Game management came to reflect the blending of those cultures and clothing has followed suit. Perhaps one end of the spectrum today being the cammo clad deer slayer using his plastic stocked .300 WSM on the Saturday morning sports show and a member of this board wearing Filson taking his SXS into a grouse covert.

That said, I, like many of the writers here, embrace either depending upon the season, the game, and the regulations of the jurisdiction in which I am hunting. In short, there are few simple comparrisons with the European hunting environment. All that's good, Joe

Joe,

Very well stated. The comparision between Texas and Pennsylvania is very good.

The only thing I would add is about the ties. Look at pictures of baseball games from the same era. Almost everyone in the stands is wearing a suit coat, tie and hat. So, in effect what you say is true. People simply wore their everyday dress when hunting.



Pete

Joe,

Excellent post!