Hunting’s twilight rule scrutinized Fatality spurs safety doubts

Glance out your window today at 4:32 p.m.

Would you feel comfortable walking through the woods knowing that someone is training a loaded gun at deer in the day’s dying light?

Would you be willing to take that shot and accept the responsibility that follows?

Although this month’s tragic death of a young hunter in Levant occurred well after dark, the incident has again raised the question of when Maine’s legal hunting day should end.

Thoroughly unscientific, out-the-window observations of this week’s formal close to each hunting day – a half-hour after the sun sets in Bangor – did little to illuminate the debate. On a sunny afternoon in the Queen City, the horizon was clearly visible amid the twinkle of streetlights. On a cloudy day, however, it may as well have been midnight.

Some hunters argue this unpredictability is precisely why they deserve the right to hunt for 30 minutes after the sun goes down. They cite the sport’s safety record – the previous shooting death as a result of hunting occurred three years ago – and argue that the vast majority of responsible hunters shouldn’t be punished for a rogue few.

“Maine hunters are a pretty respectable bunch of people,” former state Rep. Matt Dunlap, D-Old Town, said Wednesday. Dunlap served as co-chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Inland Fisheries and Wildlife until this fall, when he could not run for re-election because of term limits.

Last year, Dunlap sponsored the bill that included an extension of the deer-hunting day from 15 minutes after sunset to a full half-hour after sunset – a 180-degree change from his position when the hunting day was first extended into twilight in 1999 and the first-term legislator predicted a rash of accidents.

“What happened after we extended the hunt? Nothing happened,” Dunlap said, explaining that he changed his position after Maine Warden Service data indicated there was no increase in late-day hunting accidents reported to the department.

“The safety record demonstrated that it wasn’t a huge risk to be taking,” Dunlap said.

Hunting fatalities in Maine peaked in the mid-1950s, when 19 people were killed in a single season. But since the advent of fluorescent-orange clothing in the 1970s, rates have plummeted for all times of day.

Indeed, even after the extended hunting day went into effect last September, none of the five hunting-related accidents reported to wardens occurred later than 4 p.m., according to Warden Col. Tom Santaguida.

“With all the hunter hours that occurred in that time period, it’s still very, very safe,” he said Friday.

But the hunting community remains divided over when the hunting day should end. Some, like John Craig of Dedham, argue that Maine shouldn’t wait for fatality rates to rise before taking logical steps to eliminate a safety risk. When the hunting day was lengthened last fall, Craig was so concerned that he closed his 130 acres to open hunting, instead allowing sportsmen on the property only by permission, he said Thursday.

“Legal hunting hours will take you to just about black on most days. … It’s probably only safe a couple days a month,” said Craig, who has hunted in the Maine woods for decades.

Others, like John Carney of Fort Meyers, Fla. – who has traveled to Maine for deer season for many years – place full responsibility on the hunter.

“If they make a rule, it’s up to the hunter to follow it,” Carney said Friday, after spending the day hunting in the woods near Aurora. “If you err, err on the side of caution,” he said.

Maine law even codifies this responsibility of exercising good judgment in a “target identification” law, put in place after the 1988 accidental shooting of Karen Wood a few hundred yards from her Hermon home. Notably, the infamous “white mitten” shooting occurred well before sundown.

“No one is allowed to use the fact that they couldn’t see what they were doing as a defense,” Santaguida said. “You have a legal responsibility to know exactly what you’re shooting at.”

All the recent efforts to extend the hunting day originated with the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, whose leadership had long complained that Maine’s hunting laws, which until last year allowed a wide range of different legal times for different species, were too confusing. Historically, Maine had allowed hunting for a full half-hour after sunset, but the day was shortened decades ago in response to concerns about safety and to allay fears of a declining deer population.

“We felt we had done a good job safety-wise, and had earned that opportunity back,” SAM Executive Director George Smith said Friday.

Hunters also argued (correctly, according to state biologists) that deer are more active at dawn and dusk, making twilight a prime hunting time.

One man wrote last year in an online hunting magazine that of the 20 deer he’d shot during a lifetime of afternoon hunting, 15 of them were killed just after the sun went down.

That argument doesn’t hold water with Craig, who said that he has shot all his deer with the full visibility of daylight. Rather than squeezing in a few last moments of hunting, the Dedham man unloads his gun when he can no longer see, then sits out the half-hour before walking to his car with the aid of a flashlight, he said.

“It isn’t worth killing a few hundred extra deer in that twilight time if it jeopardizes safety,” Craig said. “I know a lot of people will push it way to the end of legal shooting time.”

State legislators could revisit the hunting hours law at any time, but it is impossible to say whether any such change will be submitted before next month’s deadline for proposing bills for the 2005 session. Neither Dunlap nor his co-chairman, Sen. Bruce Bryant, D-Dixfield, have yet heard rumors of such a bill.

“The public would like to hear, ‘If you change this law, you’ll have nothing to worry about.’ Well, there’s already nothing to worry about,” Dunlap said.