SPRING FOLIAGE APPEARS TO AFFECT HUNTING ACCIDENTS

JEFFERSON CITY -- As opening day of spring turkey hunting season approaches, Bob Staton finds himself studying spring foliage. As a turkey hunter, Staton has always been interested in the progress of spring leaf-out. Knowing whether spring is early, late or right on schedule helps predict how wild turkey gobblers will behave. But increasingly, his interest in the timing of spring is professional.

As a protection programs supervisor for the Missouri Department of Conservation, Staton gathers and analyzes data about hunting accidents. Studying when, where, how and why hunters get hurt helps him design hunter education classes to produce safer hunters. That's why he finds information about the past two years' spring turkey hunting accidents so interesting.

"The last couple of years, the vegetation in south Missouri has been leafed out during turkey season but not in the north," says Staton. "And for the past two years nearly all the reported hunting accidents have occurred in the southern half of the state."

Staton says he and many others who watch hunting accident statistics have long thought that turkey hunting mishaps might be related to spring leaf-out. But the leading theory was that a late spring -- with few leaves and wide-open forest vistas -- encouraged hunters to shoot at distant targets, leading to more hunting accidents. Staton says that seems not to be the case.

"We are finding that most turkey hunting accidents happen at relatively close range. Many involve victims who are mistaken for game because the shooter can see only part of their bodies. And a significant number are line-of-fire accidents where shooters fired at turkeys and couldn't see victims who were either between the shooter and the turkey or in the line of fire beyond the turkey."

Last year's spring turkey season was a relatively safe one. Only six hunting accidents were reported, and none resulted in the victim's death. Three of the five incidents involved hunting partners who separated to hunt different areas. In each case, the partners did not keep track of one another's positions, and one later entered the other's hunting area.