They have public access hunting areas here, but come deer season there are so many "hunters" out there that it simply is not safe. Most of them are fellas that come from around the larger cities and probably don't shoot half a dozen cartridges a year.... Seems that every 8 or 10 years someone gets shot up there... About 10 years ago a teenage boy who was there with his dad for his first ever deer hunt heard something coming in the brush, and so he shot it... His father bled to death before they could get him into town.... Now, a partner and I did often wait until deer season was over, then go in and call those areas for predators, or do a bit of squirrel or bunny hunting there... But during the deer season I stayed out of those areas... Do you hunt "Public Hunting Areas" ?

I live in the southern more populated area of PA.Around here in rifle it's orange behind every tree on the public lands so I won't even hunt here.
In the north central part of the state where the cabin is there's loads of gamelands and state forest lands.No problem getting away from people in the big woods.If a person wants to there's plenty of places to go where you wouldn't see a hunter all day.I'm thankful we have that option cause I don't like crowds.
That's a sad story about the kid that shot his dad.I can't imagine having to live with that.I wonder how much training the boy had?

Actually, thinking about it, it was probably closer to 15 or so years ago now...(Time sure seems to pass faster the older I get)... But after reading about it in the paper, I never heard anything more about it. I only hope the kid can learn to live with it. Something like that can really screw a person up...and I do feel terrible for the boy.... But kids today just aren't raised the way they were just a few decades ago...and many never get much more than a hunter's safety course before they hit the woods with a deer rifle, for possibly the first time they have ever even been in any woods wilder than a park or the city lake, in their lives... The hunter's safety course is an excellent idea, and very helpful, particularly with people becoming further removed from the land with every generation...but it can't take the place of the actual field experience, and time spent in the woods, that was common in the past... I know that when my generation was growing up, there weren't any video games, no computers, no cell phones, no text messageing, no AC, no pagers, only 3 channels on the black and white TV, etc....and kids spent alot of their free time hunting, fishing, camping, and just running the woods...but things just aren't like that any more...and I feel we, as a people, are the worse off for it.

I want to watch it here joe so I don't seem like a know it all or do I wanna be judgemental but with all the training I gave my sons I always felt comfortable about something like this not happening.Even from the time they started till now I know they'll never point a gun at me grouse hunting.I've had my share of friends who didn't know better.When a person carries a gun it can be a matter of life and death.I just have to question the training a boy had that shot at a noise.Having said that I still realize things can still happen.