HB 1114 - Regarding youth hunting privileges.

[Ray]

Washington State - HB 1114 - Regarding youth hunting privileges.

Page - http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=1114&year=2009

BILL - http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documents/billdocs/2009-10/Pdf/Bills/House%20Bills/1114.pdf

Important sections I noticed

(3) All hunters under the age of fourteen are required to be accompanied by a Washington-licensed hunter age eighteen or older when hunting for wild animals or wild birds.

(1) "Accompanied" means to go along with another person while staying within a range of the other person that permits continual unaided visual and auditory communication.

[NWTFhunter]

I dont really have a problem with those two sections. 

[MountainMan7640]

 As an instructor in this state of Hunter Education I have to agree with this and this is why from my stand point.
  Although "most" young hunters are very safe, when they have that first chance to bag that "big" deer they tend to become extremely excited and maybe tend to forget a little about the safety behind a high powered rifle. Maybe they forget to check beyond that deer and see the farm house or another hunter etc.
  Like we tell our class students..."If you ever loose that excitement do not even go out", but learn to control that excitement and think safety first. I have seen many "adult" hunters be the most unsafe out there so then again it depends "who" they are with. Is it truely a responsible adult? But from my stand point maybe just maybe it will keep some young hunter from forgetting safety that one second before the shot. After the shot he or she could regret it for the rest of thier lives. I tend to look at it as a safety tool, although it is by no means a fail safe method.

[ICEMAN]

I say BS.

Although I hunt with my son and intend to be there all the time until I decide it is time.... if they are going to continue to slice away priveledges in the name of safety, why not pole axe it completely?  So at 14 are they old enough to take off on a trail all by themselves?  Maybe we should make it 15 1/2 like a learners permit. No wait 16 like a drivers license, heaven knows 16year olds are safe.

Look, another law is not needed. If you want to save lives, ban swimming. Ban kids from driving until 18 years old. Ban snowboarding, crap every year some snowboarder gets killed. We really havent had that many youth gun accidents in this state. More full grown "mature" adults perform stupid idiotic things with guns....maybe we should ban them. I dont see any "instructors" or wildlife official suggesting that elder hunters get retested, recertified. This is simply a knee jerk reaction to the horrible accident which occurred this bear season, an accident which could have involved an adult hunter shooting an innocent hiker.   How many hikers die each year from negligence? How many mountain climbers died last year in this state...? I dont remember seeing any new laws to help save mountain climbers... 

This crap really pisses me off. It is a waste of my tax dollars.

[ppodpearson]

Maybe some of you folks with a few years under your belts can confirm. When I started hunting back in the mid '60s, didn't one have to be 14 to purchase a hunting license? That was back in the day when regulations came out on one large sheet of paper, map on one side and regulations on the other. Dave

[KillBilly]

Maybe some of you folks with a few years under your belts can confirm. When I started hunting back in the mid '60s, didn't one have to be 14 to purchase a hunting license? That was back in the day when regulations came out on one large sheet of paper, map on one side and regulations on the other. Dave

I started hunting with a license at 10 in 1957. Of course my Dad purchased it for me so I don't remember about the process back then. All I know is that I had one.

[buck470]

I say BS.

Although I hunt with my son and intend to be there all the time until I decide it is time.... if they are going to continue to slice away priveledges in the name of safety, why not pole axe it completely?  So at 14 are they old enough to take off on a trail all by themselves?  Maybe we should make it 15 1/2 like a learners permit. No wait 16 like a drivers license, heaven knows 16year olds are safe.

Look, another law is not needed. If you want to save lives, ban swimming. Ban kids from driving until 18 years old. Ban snowboarding, crap every year some snowboarder gets killed. We really havent had that many youth gun accidents in this state. More full grown "mature" adults perform stupid idiotic things with guns....maybe we should ban them. I dont see any "instructors" or wildlife official suggesting that elder hunters get retested, recertified. This is simply a knee jerk reaction to the horrible accident which occurred this bear season, an accident which could have involved an adult hunter shooting an innocent hiker.   How many hikers die each year from negligence? How many mountain climbers died last year in this state...? I dont remember seeing any new laws to help save mountain climbers... 

This crap really pisses me off. It is a waste of my tax dollars.

I agree, but the reason they do this is because there are so many knuckle heads out there that just don't think about what the heck they are doing! so they make laws to protect these people from themselves!, the rest of us that can think for ourselves get screwed by these shotgun laws aimed at protecting Idiots.

[saylean]

http://www.komonews.com/news/38171874.html

if this passes...we should be able to hunt Aug for bears then right?

[huntnphool]

What a bunch of BS, even people over the age of 16 have accidentally shot people each year. Interesting that there is a companion bill to have everyone in the woods including hikers to wear orange, "However, there's concern in the hiking community about the cost of trying to enforce that - and that it might be going too far."

 They aren't very concerned for their own safety if they are bitching about having to wear orange while hiking., just a bunch of fu#$ing whiners

[jjdavis2222]

 Thought this might affect some of us and interest us. This was on Komo News.

Bill would raise age for unsupervised hunting
 



 YouNews™Story Published: Jan 22, 2009 at 4:09 PM PST

Story Updated: Jan 22, 2009 at 6:45 PM PST
By Keith Eldridge  Watch the story OLYMPIA, Wash. - State lawmakers, responding to last year's deadly shooting of a hiker by a 14-year-old boy, are working to close a loophole that allowed young hunters to go out into the woods alone.

And the state's hunting community says it is behind the effort to raise the minimum age for unsupervised hunting.

If such a law had been in effect last year, Pamela Almli might still be alive.

She had gone out Aug. 2 to enjoy a day of hiking on Sauk Mountain in Skagit County. On the same day, a 14-year-old boy from Concrete went out in the same area to enjoy a day of hunting.

Prosecutors say the teen and his 16-year-old brother saw what they thought was a bear from more than 100 yards away through a scope, according to charging papers. The 14-year-old pulled the trigger, killing Almli, court papers say.

Now the 14-year-old boy is set to go on trial in juvenile court in the next few months. If convicted, he could be jailed until the age of 21.

Ironically, there used to be a law against young teens hunting without adult supervision. But the law was changed in 1994 to make it legal.

"I think there's good reason to believe that had the not been changed this tragedy may not have happened," says Rep. Brian Blake, D-Aberdeen.

Blake is leading the effort to restore the law to have hunters up to age 14 supervised.

Ed Owens of the Hunting Heritage Council said his group supports the effort.

"What's interesting is the absence of it in the law - most of the people in the hunting community weren't aware that this existed," Owens says. "We always assumed it was the way it had always been."

The state Department of Fish and Wildlife also believes the age needing adult supervision should be raised.

"As an agency we prefer 16 as a minimum age," says Mike Cenci of the Department of Fish and Wildlife. "Young hunters who are supervised by experienced hunters are safer hunters."

There's a companion bill to have everyone in the woods during hunting season - hikers included - to wear bright orange.

The theory behind that proposal is that dark-colored clothing makes it hard to tell a human from an animal, especially in limited-visibility conditions. Brightly colored clothing eliminates all doubt.

However, there's concern in the hiking community about the cost of trying to enforce that - and that it might be going too far.

Says Jonathan Guzzo of the Washington Trails Association, "Hunting is a very safe community. The number of hunting incidents that hikers have had have been very very small in number."

But the bill's sponsor says the bottom line is that he wants to do everything he can to see that what happened to Pamela Almli doesn't happen again

[FrankDown]

Washington made kids buy hunting and fishing licenses?

I can see both sides of this.  Giving or taking, I think that if we go head to head with the hikers on hunting vs hiking we will lose.  I hike too, but I dont want to wear hunter orange when Im hiking.  Im not sure about a solution to this.  At 14 Id expect my offpsring would be mature enough to hunt an area alone, I was hunting at 8 but thats a different time, but you never know what could happen.  You dont know what could happen at 15 or 16 or 39.

I saw where another hiker got killed on a glacier or something the other day and the wife was rescued.  Two kids got killed snowboarding, one man killed skiing.

I understand that this hadnt happened in a long time with a hunting accident in Washingotn state?