Fluorescent Clothes A Bright Idea Worth Your Investment

One incident along hip-deep pheasant cover about a dozen years ago convinced me that wearing a hunter orange vest might save my life.

Until then, despite knowing that tests had shown that fluorescent orange vests and hats made hunters highly visible, I wasn’t convinced to invest in equipment that would enable birds to see me.

I had agreed to take a friend hunting pheasants. Because I had never hunted with him before that day, I didn’t know that he was excitable.

I put him in the lower end of the draw and walked around the cover to the top of the high weeds. I was wearing drab clothing; dark clouds cut visibility. My friend started up the draw with his dog.

Suddenly, a rooster jumped and flew straight at me. My friend, apparently not seeing me, fired at the bird. The pellets cleared my head by about 2 feet.

I bought an orange hat that week and an orange vest a month later. Although not required then, I’ve always worn hunter orange while hunting upland birds.

Finally, in 1991, after a lot of pro and con arguments among the state’s hunters, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission enacted a regulation requiring big-game and upland bird hunters to wear at least 400 square inches of fluorescent orange clothing.

Many hunters still resent having to wear hunter orange clothing. Two hunters recently challenged the department’s regulation, contending that the agency doesn’t have the right to require the wearing of a particular type of clothing.

However, the state Court of Appeals ruled that the department’s statutory authority to regulate “manner of taking” game animals includes the authority to regulate hunter safety.

Those who still oppose hunter orange contend that birds, which are not color blind, can spot hunters quickly. And they believe big-game animals, although color blind, can see orange more quickly than drab or camouflage material. They may be right. However, most bird hunters accept the fact that pheasants, quail, partridges and grouse know when hunters are in their back yard.

Whether big-game animals “see” hunter orange is a subject of continued debate. The vast majority of hunters opt for safety.

State wildlife managers, after analyzing hunting accidents for more than 60 years, say most incidents could have been prevented.

Hunters get careless, fail to exercise good judgment or violate regulations. That’s how people get shot.

The hunter who nearly shot me got careless. Although I was standing in hip-deep cover and wearing drab clothing during a dark day, he knew I was at the head of the draw. If I had been wearing highly visible hunter orange clothing, though, I doubt he would have fired at me.

A small number of hunters get “buck fever” and shoot other hunters, believing they have seen what they’re after. That’s bad judgment.

Some hunters shoot themselves, usually while they’re violating safety rules. Each year, unfortunately, hunters who carry loaded guns in vehicles shoot themselves. And a few shoot themselves while crossing fences or climbing over obstacles.

Hunters who wear fluorescent orange clothing know they’ve reduced dramatically their chances of becoming an unfortunate statistic on the department’s list of hunter mishaps.