I’ve been steaming over this incident for a day or so now, debating if was worth writing about. Obviously, the “go ahead and write about it” side won out.
On Sunday, I made a sort of last-minute run out to the Grizzly Island wildlife area for an afternoon duck hunt. I mentioned it to Holly earlier in the week, and she asked if I’d be willing to let one of her friends, a fairly new hunter, come along. Alison (the friend) lives here in the SF Bay area, and was hoping to get to know a little about Grizzly Island, since it’s relatively close to home. I figured the least I could do was show a new hunter around.
The afternoon was pretty slow, from a duck hunting perspective. A couple of little flocks of spoonies were moving around from pond to pond, but there wasn’t much else to get excited about. Alison and I were set up on a little dry spit of land with a reasonable cover around us. We told hunting stories, and joked about distant birds, and generally relaxed and enjoyed the marsh… with the never-ending hope that birds would come to land with the decoys.
A shot rang out suddenly, WAY too close. I could hear the crack of the shot load ripping through the dead fennel not five yards from Alison’s head, and a very tight shot string smacked the water about 20 yards in front of us. We both sort of sat there in shock for a moment, and then Alison scared the crap out of me again. “At least it didn’t hit me,” she said kind of weakly. And then, “I’m not hit, am I?”
Oh, man!
She wasn’t acting like she’d been hit, but then I wondered if she was so calm because she was in shock. Of course, in a couple of seconds we both realized she was fine… but it was a long couple of seconds.
Then the anger hit me. I know there was no one within 200 yards or more when we came in and set up, in the broad daylight. What idiot was out here shooting blindly through the grass? I popped up to see.
Some guy was wading along the opposite side of the levy with his dog, oblivious to our presence. The moronic thing wasn’t that he was there, it is public land after all, but that he fired a shot dead-level through the grass without knowing if anyone was around. I’m still not sure what the hell he was shooting at, as there were no birds in the air. Was he killing coots? Tweety birds? Just bored? He could have been pheasant hunting, but there were no pheasants there. If there had been, they would have been sitting in our laps.
The point is, it’s a duck marsh. Duck hunters are camouflaged and hidden from view. With that in mind, it doesn’t require great leaps of intelligence to realize it’s probably a bad idea to be shooting into the grass when you can’t see through it. Not a bad idea… a frickin’ stupid idea. That moron could have killed one of us, especially at that range.
So I yelled at him, of course. He looked at me with an idiotic Alfred E. Newman sort of expression, and sort of shrugged his shoulders.
I’m generally a very non-violent guy. I don’t like fighting and I try to avoid putting myself in a situation where it’s inevitable. Nevertheless, I wanted to curse this guy a blue streak, but I couldn’t find words. All I had was my gun in my clenched fist. There’s just not much future in physical confrontations, especially when both parties are armed. I let the possibilities play through my head and none came up well for either of us in the long run. So I just glared at him.
At first, the goddamned moron thought he would just continue hunting whatever he was hunting, poking around behind his dog less than 40 yards from where we were sitting, but I guess he thought better of it and sort of eased off across the marsh. I watched him as he crossed the pond and then started to set up on the next levy over, still within 100 yards and plenty close enough to be dangerous. I stepped out into plain view and stood glaring until he picked up and moved on out of sight.
At that point, I wanted to follow him back to his vehicle and turn him in at the check station, but the truth is, what could they have done? Technically, no law was broken. No one was hurt (by sheer luck) and no property was damaged. Idiots like that need to have their guns taken away, but the problem is that there is no mechanism in place to do so.
Anyway, we managed to move past the experience and hunt the rest of the afternoon. There was a brief flurry of activity just before sunset, but the evening flight I’d counted on never happened. Even though we managed to get a couple of shots off, it just wasn’t meant to be and we walked out of the marsh empty-handed.
But at least neither of us made the evening news…
Phillip Loughlin
Mark
Dear Phillip,
I feel your concern on this incident. Where I have gone deer hunting in high use areas, such as in the Kolob Terrace Area of South Utah, I have had a couple of close calls myself in areas where there was a lot of hunters chasing game in cover.
Grizzly Island is listed as a Class “A” State Wildlife Area. But despite this level of restriction of the number of hunters per hunt day, it looks like upland game hunting for rabbits (cottontails and jack) is taking place on the same days as for pheasants AND for waterfowl.
http://www.dfg.ca.gov/lands/wa/region3/grizzlyisland/hunting.html
I believe that access to some of the SWA’s is being cut back some days of the week due to staffing issues. This may be resulting having upland game hunting going on in the same areas as some waterfowl hunting.
I am not saying that the guy who shot in your direction was not committing a gross breach of hunting safety.
But perhaps a better organization and delineation of the hunt styles is warranted. Upland game-style hunting, with more of a tendency for “direct fire”, likely needs more management control and area separation than what is currently being done by DFG.
Also, perhaps a fluorescent orange flag or banner on a tall pole coming out of the blind as a more permanent marker, may be a good idea if the wearing of hunter’s orange gear is not conducive to waterfowl hunting.
As for that hunter’s lack of response to the incident, that’s a hard one to figure. Your choice of the word “moron” seems easily warranted.