"Scratch my last reply, I just read more details of the accident.
"
No problem, although I did answer. Different hunts require different field rules, certainly. Most of my deer hunting was in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where long ranges and shooting across valleys was the general practice. Also, there were always a lot of other hunters in the area. After a couple of close calls from other hunters, I stopped deer hunting there, and started going to Wyoming.
In California, there are just too darned many people up on the mountain you don't want anywhere within 1000 yards of you. On my last hunt there, up near Lone Pine, I was scanning an area across a valley with my binoculars, just after dawn. I spotted a nice buck picking his way down from a ridgeline, and was just about to scope it.
From below me, to my left, some guy with dog poop for brains actually let go with a full auto M16. He fired about 10 rounds. Never hit the buck, but I just packed up my stuff and climbed out. I never went back there. There are crazy people hunting in California.
"From below me, to my left, some guy with dog poop for brains actually let go with a full auto M16."
What an arse. I don't deer hunt for that reason, and actually wear my Army-liberated flak jacket when on my own property some times during deer season. (Poachers, in addition to being theives, are idiots.)
Although I admit shooting feral pigs from my pickup with an AR-15 and a cruddy Romanian AK-47 (semi-auto) clone --- huge problem animal for ranchers. I've probably taken 10 shoots when shooting w/out glasses.
A friend of mine gave up hunting in the Sierra's because he caught someone putting their rifle scope on him to "figure out who he was."
I related this story to someone I knew that hunted, and he didn't see what the problem was, and that he'd done it himself.
I think my eyebrows disappeared when I heard that, and I know it left me speechless.