Apparent hunting accident kills man

A Ponderay, Idaho, man was found dead Saturday afternoon up the St. Joe River, the victim of an apparent hunting accident, the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office reported.

Steven Wayne Seppala, 43, was the third hunter to die in as many days in North Idaho and the fourth hunter to die this season – only two weeks into it. Two other hunters and a woodcutter were reported missing in the woods last weekend, but were found unharmed after brief searches.

“We had either zero or one hunting fatality last year,” Idaho Fish and Game information officer Phil Cooper said Monday. There was a hunting fatality near Rexburg last week, Cooper said. Also last week, he said, a horse along the St. Joe River was mistaken for an elk and killed.

Shoshone County Sheriff Chuck Reynalds said Seppala’s body was discovered by a hunting party at 4:45 p.m. Saturday on Forest Service road 217 near Roundtop Mountain. The mountain is south of Avery, Idaho, in the St. Joe National Forest.

Seppala “died of a single gunshot wound,” Reynalds said. “We do not have anybody who has come forward yet,” with information about the shooting, the sheriff said.

An autopsy was conducted Monday afternoon, he said.

Reynalds and investigators spent Monday combing the ground for shell casings and had already collected rifles from several hunting groups in the area Saturday. Seppala, he said, was hunting with four relatives, all from the Ponderay area.

Evidence at the scene, Reynalds said, indicates the shooting happened at fairly close range.

“I think the person who did the shooting knows it,” Reynalds said. He believes the shooting was likely an accident, Reynalds said, but that the shooter has chosen not to admit responsibility.

“They are going to have to live with this or they’ll shoot themselves or somehow choke this down,” Reynalds said. “We hope someone comes forward with information about this shooting so we can put some closure to this.”

Seppala was married, Reynalds said, and had a large extended family.

Seppala was wearing an older, faded red plaid coat and hat, Reynalds said. “This is indicative of what’s happening with hunters here – they are not wearing hunter orange.”

The sheriff joined Cooper of Fish and Game and other officials in pleading with hunters to wear hunter orange vests or hats, at least. Idaho is among the few remaining states that does not have a law requiring hunter orange.

“It could prevent a tragedy for victim and the victim’s family and the shooter and the shooter’s family,” Cooper said.

There were two other hunting-related fatalities in North Idaho recently:

On Thursday, 42-year-old Michael Vanslate, Coeur d’Alene, set out on a hunting trip with a friend. Vanslate died of injuries he suffered when his pickup truck went off a gravel forest road and tumbled nearly 100 feet down a steep embankment. Idaho State Police investigators said alcohol may be a factor in the crash.

Jurgen Thiede, a 54-year-old from Ione, Wash., was found dead west of Worley, Idaho, at 5:45 a.m. Sunday by a Spokane County search and rescue team. Searchers from both Kootenai and Spokane counties had been out since Saturday night looking for Thiede, who had gone elk hunting earlier that day in the hilly, tree-covered country around Mica Mountain behind his son’s house near the Idaho-Washington border.

“He apparently got his elk,” Capt. Ben Wolfinger, information officer for the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department, said Monday. “There was a dead elk right where he was found, and his gun had been fired. He apparently was walking toward the elk he had just killed in a small clearing when he toppled over.”

Wolfinger said Thiede was described as an experienced hunter who had recently cleared a physical exam with his doctor and was said to be in excellent shape. An autopsy was scheduled in Spokane.

The Bonner County Sheriff’s Office conducted three searches over the weekend for missing hunters or woodcutters. All three of the missing were found by search teams.

Rory Ashford of Post Falls was reported missing Friday night when his wife told authorities he was overdue from elk hunting in the Kaniksu National Forest on the east side of Lake Pend Oreille. This is the same area where Vanslate died.

Bonner County Sheriff’s deputies found Ashford’s rig, called out a Sandpoint-based search and rescue unit, which found Ashford just before noon Saturday.

On Saturday night, a Salmon, Idaho, man, Christian Fisher, was reported overdue in the Priest Lake area. Mike Nielsen of Priest Lake Search and Rescue said his teams used all-terrain vehicles to search the PeeWee Mountain trails south of Priest Lake. After several hours of searching early Sunday, the teams found Fisher walking the trails at about 7 a.m. The Salmon man told rescuers he was in the area to scout for a November deer hunting trip when he became disoriented and kept walking trails that took him farther from his truck.

Earlier Saturday, a Bonner County sheriff’s deputy near Priest Lake located a Spokane man, Phillip Dickenson, who had been reported as overdue from a trip to gather firewood. Dickenson was apparently returning to his truck when he was located.

Dave O’Brien, information officer with the Panhandle National Forests, said North Idaho Forests “are wet-type forests. During hunting season they are wet and they are brushy. The preponderance of shots are close shots. It’s easy to get lost out there, easy to get disoriented.”

In addition to hunter orange, O’Brien suggested GPS devices and compasses to help hunters remain oriented in unfamiliar terrain.