Night Vision Hunting, Shooting, Dead Cow and Responsibility . . . . and now a dead Hunter

TexasGunTrustLawyer

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I posted this on another forum a few months ago. A few days ago, it was reported that a woman not only shot a fellow hunter in the head, but recorded the shot with her ATN Thermal's SD Card.

Know your target! Positive ID of your target is an absolute necessity and that is not easy when hunting at night with thermal alone. This women was using an ATN Thermal with an SD Card digital recording device.

Use of good quality Thermal along with I2 the use your head are requirements when hunting at night.

The video should be available by a FOIA request. I would like to see it. I also want to know what unit she was using.

I have posted about this before. Positive ID of your target is required before you shoot.

"Investigators said they have seen the recording. They said an outline of something on all fours is seen in the recording.

Investigators said Young was shot in the face."

Failure of common sense, failure to positively ID the target combined with the use of inferior equipment resulted in this mans death.

It was reported be an ATN optic. No word on the model.


http://www.wyff4.com/article/shot-t...-by-womans-firearm-investigators-say/12239667


As a Hog Hunter, I often hunt in mixed environments. I am always finding deer with the Hogs. I often I'm hunting in areas that have cattle and caps mixed in with the Hogs and the deer. It is very easy to get focused on the pegs and not adequately assess the environment that is down range of the pigs. If a projectile fully penetrates the pig it will be going somewhere. You certainly do not want it to go into a cow or deer behind the pig.

Target identification is also a problem. Hogs, deer and cows that are laying down or feeding with their heads down, often look a lot alike when you first see them in the night vision or thermal units. We are legally responsible for knowing what are Target's are and probably identifying them.

Legally, we are responsible for the damage of those projectiles do. We as the shooting Community must keep that in mind while we are practicing our Sport and exercising our 2nd Amendment rights.

Let's face it, we do not want to be this guy who is getting a call from the landowner and a bill for a dead cow. Not only is it expensive, but you almost certainly will not be invited back to shoot and hunt on the landowners property.
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They say charges are yet to be filed, but it would be a mistake it they let her go free or with a slap on the wrist. I agree that we are responsible for the bullet every time we pull the trigger.
 
Man this is really scary. And so unfortunate. I've been planning on hunting at night with thermal/I2 but after this I think it would be a good idea to have another pair of eyes to confirm the target.
 
Great write up pal. This is the exact reason I always advise people to have some sort of i2 device to PID with.

Just the the other night we spotted a pack of about 25-30 pigs in a open field. According to thermal optics we're we're good to go. Buuut I always check with i2 before shooting. Luckily I'm so adamant about it because the pvs-14 revealed 2 lights through the thin strip of woods beyond the pigs. Had we just trusted the thermal we could have killed someone in those houses while they were asleep....

Please people... Check over and over to make sure of your surroundings. The odds of that bullet traveling just right through the woods, missing all those trees and penetrating through a wall are slim to none. But it can happen.

Jay
 
Damn, thanks for posting this. I also hunted hogs around cow feeders frequently this past year and found target ID to be very difficult a number of times. Especially when on a NV budget.
 
Positive target ID is critical, I lost one of my buddies in a pig hunting accident 6 years ago. He came out of the brush behind a group of pigs and his uncle shot him.

I haven't bought any thermal/NV as I want to do it right when I do.

Must be aware of surroundings. I have always scouted areas during the day to see where structures are, pastures with animals...
 
Positive target ID is critical, I lost one of my buddies in a pig hunting accident 6 years ago. He came out of the brush behind a group of pigs and his uncle shot him.

I haven't bought any thermal/NV as I want to do it right when I do.

Must be aware of surroundings. I have always scouted areas during the day to see where structures are, pastures with animals...

VERY sorry to hear this Sir. Thank you for sharing this tragic story that I also hope will bring awareness to this vitally important topic.
 
Tangentially on topic. Here is a daytime hunt, gone bad. Luckily no one got hurt, except for pride. Great video of what NOT to do

Note that the boar was HUNTING them too.

This was a video from the early 2000 on my family's former ranch on the coastal range on the east side of the mountains from King City, CA. Russian boar were introduced there and as you can see, this hog has plenty of the genetic string in him.

click on the picture to see the video
pig by ChorizoUSMC, on Flickr
 
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AD's don't generally exist; ND's do.

The best way to avoid this altogether is to just require the use of basic NODs and an IR beacon or chemlight at a minimum. Should probably be a law in states with hog problems and lots of night hunting. It's the night time equivalent of an orange hunter's vest or a seatbelt --meaning it'll take a damn law to make anyone pay attention without learning the hard way, unfortunately. Used to be crossing fences was the biggest cause of firearms related accidents but I bet night use will eclipse that soon.

A safety vest for thermal could also be rigged up, but getting people to use it and getting people on the same page may be problematic, again, a law, but also standardization of a proven method. I'm thinking maybe a creative use of hand warmers and/or mylar but something that can "flash" hot and/or cold would be even better. Some sort of heat strobe.

Shit, I don't hunt at night but on the range at night I require anyone in my party to wear either a beacon or an IR chemlight and we also employ VS17 panels. Hell, I'm safer now than we were in the army during live fires 15 years ago (we didn't have any of this stuff, patches hadn't come out yet, beacons weren't issued and we had IR chemlights but they weren't used for that). I saw a "team leader" (god, what a fuck up) almost wipe out his whole fire team during a night fire when the idiot flanked his own damn team. Only reason he didn't is because he was such a huge fuckup, he missed all three of them at point blank range with an M4. An embarrassment for the whole unit almost became a tragedy, but because it didn't nothing happened except it becoming a cautionary tale handed down. We see how well those are working.

If budget is a problem, then this isn't the thing for you. Quality thermal isn't cheap and the better NODs are worth it. I only have 14's right now, but they're the best I could get my hands on and probably the best all-around NV item, precisely because it only works on one eye. Most of my NV money went towards OTHER stuff, like lasers, beacons, flashlights and shit like that. NOW I can focus on getting something different/better (like those Sentinels and eventually that thermal clip on Vic!).

Oh, and TNVC sells 9v IR beacons and others. Some are cheap as shit too and no reason you shouldn't have at least a few.