Hunting Season Approaches

Hunting Season Approaches

Fall is on the way and with it comes the hunting season. Right now is the time to think about this and how it will affect your riding in the next few months. Depending on where you live, the season can start as early as August.

Since both trail riding and hunting are often done on public land, the two activities have the potential to collide. I know of many riders who stop trail riding during this time. The most common reasons to stop riding are: fear that the noise of a gunshot will spook their horse; possibly having their horse confused for a game animal; or an errant shot striking them or their horse.

How can you be safer?

Hunting accidents are actually quite rare given the number of people participating in the sport. Yes, each year we will read about some hunting accident that has occurred, but there are far more “horse accidents” and horse related deaths in our sport than in the sport of hunting. Most accidents that happen in the hunting field do not involve horse and rider.

Knowing this should put into perspective how little chance there is of being shot at by a hunter compared to having a horse related accident of any kind. However, I also know that it’s the fear of what might happen that most often causes people to stop riding.

A hunter is responsible for not only recognizing his target but also for knowing what’s beyond the target should he miss. I believe most hunters follow this practice, or we would see a dramatic rise in hunting-related accidents. However, if a hunter can’t SEE you, then he can’t know you’re there. Terrain has a lot to do with how far a bullet will travel. Obviously, in open spaces, a bullet can travel farther than it could in wooded country. However, in either place visibility is the key.

While the scope of this article is not to discuss bullet’s flight and trajectory, you should have some understanding of it. What many don’t know is that a bullet has a trajectory and if fired from a rifle held level with the ground (as opposed to firing it in the air) that trajectory will not carry a bullet as far as some people would imagine. Gravity and the slowing of the bullet’s speed cause it naturally to fall to the ground. But given that the bullet might travel farther than the intended target, the important thing is that a hunter be able to see you and recognize that you and your horse are in the background before he fires a shot.

How can you make yourself and your horse more visible? The best way to do this is with the same colored material that hunters use to protect themselves. It’s known as “hunter orange.” It was chosen because it is highly visible under many circumstances and the faded lighting of dawn and dusk, and there is virtually nothing in nature that resembles it. Certainly there is no animal with a similar color in its coat.

Many people seem to think any bright color or light color will help them be more visible and that simply isn’t true. White is a dangerous color since it looks like the white that is found in the coat of many deer, especially the “whitetail”. Medium yellow is similar to the coat on an elk. Red actually looses it light reflective qualities earlier in the evening than other colors. Bottom Line -- wear hunter orange during the hunting season.

So the next question is where to find the material, and how to use it in a real world application. Also what to use and what not to use. You need different products to protect you and your horse.

The easiest piece to choose is a vest made of hunter orange material/plastic which can be purchased anywhere safety clothes are sold. All sporting goods stores or catalogs that carry hunting supplies will have something that will fit the bill. A simple traffic vest will also work and is totally waterproof. Cabelas catalog has items designed for women as well as men. Also in Cabelas are items for the pack string or the trail horse. There are hunter orange covers for cowboy hats, pommel and saddle bags -- all made of hunter orange. You can find them at www.cabelas.com.

Now that we have some things for you and your saddle, the next task is to outfit your horse. There aren’t many things that are made of hunter orange to go directly on your horse; however, you can make a few that will serve you well. Any fabric store will have some type of material in hunter orange. Sometimes they have it in the fleece or “polar tech” type of material. Purchase a yard and cut yourself some “polo” style wraps. Wrap at least two of your horses legs with the material (using diagonals i.e. right front, left hind). That way anyone looking through a brushy area and noticing “brown” legs won’t mistake them for an animal they are hunting.

You can also do a nice tail wrap, which I highly recommend. You can make a saddle blanket cover but extend the hunter orange to go well back over your horse’s hip. You can even make a hip cover by simply putting grommets in the material (similar to the grommets in a tarp) and then attaching the hip cover to your saddle strings. If you ride English, simply sew a hip cover to the back of your saddle pad and let it extend out over our horse’s rump. Use the same material to make narrow tubes to slide onto your bridle or halter. With your horse having hunter orange on its head, legs and hip, and you wearing a hunter orange vest, you will be clearly visible to all.