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No wonder

No wonder some others(voters) do not want to share public lands with hunters.

There is no excuse for this or any other hunting "accident" like this. It is not an accident that someone mistakes a human being for a game animal, it is total stupidity. No excuse!

Not really an accident in my opinion. The gun was fired on purpose. Obviously the shooter did not confirm that it was a legal turkey. That is illegal. You're right, jackwagons like this are ruining it for responsible hunters!!!

Turkey season seems to have the highest shooting incidents. Every year we see this.

What an idiot

This happened around noontime. Can't argue that the light was poor. Failure to properly identify game? Sounds to me like the 'investigation' has only started.

I can only assume that it gets worse with time as our culture shifts more and more into large urban populations and kids raised in the country are now in the minority. This is not an elitist thought on my part, but one I think is a fact. We were smarter (about a lot of things) than our city cousins, and not so much about other, less important things. We learned early on about guns, knives, axes, machinery, horses, cows, and the reproduction process. We knew where meat, milk, and eggs came from. We knew how to tell a copperhead from a hog nosed snake and a cottonmouth from a diamondback moccasin. I think kids today, in general, suffer from a lack of parenting. They may have an excellent education, but that’s not all that counts. We see them on the news each and every day. I also think their parents suffered from the same. I don’t think “common sense” is natural as much as it’s learned, at least in humans. It has to be passed down IMO from someone who had to learn it themselves. It’s obviously not taught in school nor should it be. It’s the parent’s responsibility to teach their children right from wrong, as well as a plethora of other things. There was obviously a flat spot in the shooter’s learning curve.

I live near where this happened. Hunting deer and turkey at the two conservations areas mentioned is by special permit only, and very limited for the size of the areas. I checked the area regulations to be certain and the regs state hunters are not allowed to hunt on, or within 100ft of any trails or any road open to vehicle traffic. I've been lucky enough to get drawn for deer hunts in the area and have always seen or heard people on the trails in the area during the managed hunts. I would also assume this hunter did like most do and used the trail to walk in on, so it would be very unlikely if the hunter claimed he didn't know he was close to the trail. It's been a few years since my last permit for the area, but I'm pretty sure there is something in the paperwork that comes with the permit reminding hunters the area is open to the public during the hunt and there is the chance of encountering non-hunters during your time out there. Regardless of whether the hunter knew where the trail was or had lost track of how close it was, it was extremely careless, and possibly criminal, for not positively identifying the target before shooting.

Here's a link to one of the local news stories about it.

Just read in last week's "Outdoor News" that a father and son were bowhunting for turkeys in South Dakota and father was accidentally shot and killed by his son. No other details as to how/why?

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