Shoshone County sheriff will lobby for hunter orange law

Shoshone County Sheriff Chuck Reynalds is on a mission to change Idaho law to require all hunters to wear orange after another hunter was shot in the St. Joe area this weekend.

“Idaho needs to do something,” Reynalds said Monday while driving back from Kootenai County Medical Center where he visited the injured hunter who was shot Sunday while tracking deer on an open ridge above Moon Pass Road.

He plans to bring the issue up at the state sheriff’s association meeting in Boise this winter and then try to find a legislator to carry the bill. Reynalds said Idaho could model the law after other states that already require hunters to wear orange.

Idaho is among the few remaining states that does not have a hunter orange law.

Reynalds said all the hunting accidents he’s dealt with have one similarity and that is the victim wasn’t wearing hunter orange.

“It’s just like I’ve never pulled a drowning victim out of the water that had on a life preserver,” he said.

Post Falls resident Bruce Lavern Jensen, 38, was shot in the right hip by a 7 mm magnum gun while deer hunting Sunday. It was the fourth accident this season in the St. Joe area.

A Ponderay hunter was killed in October while on Roundtop Mountain in the St. Joe National Forest. The sheriff’s department still has no leads on who killed the man.

Another hunter was accidentally shot in the foot by a friend, and a horse along the St. Joe River was killed when a hunter mistook it for an elk.

Jensen, who underwent surgery and was in fair condition Monday at Kootenai Medical Center, was completely clothed in camouflage and was carrying a black powder rifle when he was shot at about 7 a.m. near mile post 2 on the north fork of the St. Joe River.

David Eugene Spicer, 56, of Caldwell, Idaho, was parked on the road when he thought he saw a deer on the hillside, police reports said.

When Jensen yelled that he had been shot, Spicer crossed the river and found Jensen. Spicer then went to Avery and got the St. Joe EMS. Jensen was carried off the mountain and was taken by Medstar to KMC.

Spicer was arrested for alleged aggravated assault and booked into the Shoshone County jail. He also was charged with several Idaho Fish and Game violations, Reynalds said.

“This one here, like the death, is so preventable it’s insane,” Reynalds said. “It was an open hillside.”

Investigators are still searching for the person who shot and killed Steven Seppala, 43, of Ponderay, in October on Roundtop Mountain in the St. Joe National Forest.

Seppala was wearing an older, faded red plaid coat and hat, not hunter orange.

He was hunting with four family members when he was hit with a single rifle bullet. All involved parties have agreed to take polygraphs. Reynalds said the department still has a couple of polygraphs to conduct but that so far there are no leads.

He’s frustrated no one has stepped forward to claim responsibility for Seppala’s death.

Given the terrain in the area, Reynalds said he believes the shooter likely was close enough to be aware he hit Seppala.

“We’re just hoping everyone stays safe and wears orange,” Reynalds said. “There’s still a lot of time, so think safe.”