Being scoped

[Bait O' Eggs]

What are your thoughts on being scoped? I hunted the coast for years and never saw a hunter that didnt have a pair binos for looking with. Every time I have rifle hunted east of I-5 I have had some doughball look at me thru this rifle scope and I dont like it one bit.

I hunted deer east a few years and nobody had binos, they all just looked occasionaly thru their rifle scope, and some of those times it was at me :shocked: :shocked:

I got scoped in Idaho one time last week, as far as I was concerned the guy was pointing a deadly weapon at me, and I was taking it quite serious and considered shooting him in self defense. :shocked: :shocked: [img]graemlins/1zhelp.gif[/img] (well sort of thought about shooting him )

It is pretty obvious when some guy is looking at you thru his rifle scope. I watched this guy climbing a ridge, he gets up to a level spot, he stops to catch his breathe, he sees us on the next ridge, he picks up his gun, looks thru his scope at us to get a better look at us, then puts his gun down and continues his climb. He looked at nothing else thru his scope but us. As far as I know he has a shell in the chamber and his safety off while he is pointing his gun at me.

What can I do to keep people from pointing their gun at me? Hunter Orange seems to make it easier for them to find me to look at with their rifle scope, so I am having a hard time endorsing orange with my full vote.

Thoughts comments??

[Rip'N'Lips]

BOE-

I think hunter orange is still the way to go.

Think about it, would you rather be scoped by someone who can clearly identify you because of your orange, or scoped by someone who hears noise in the woods and thinks it may be an animal? I tell you what, I know when deer and elk are moving towards me I get a little jumpy, when I see someone in hunter orange, no jumpiness....

BTW. I loved your post about your Idaho trip, I am going to try and do that next year with my dad for sure.

Rip'N'Lips

[tailchaser]

Honestly the only time I know I was scoped I screamed the war cry and took off after his butt. Unfortunately I knew who he was and gave him a monsterous lip lashing when I found him the next day. I've heard multiple stories about people looking through their scopes at people and accidentally hit the trigger. You know what the result was. A young kid was killed here three years ago when I guy on a landing scoped a 12 year old and his grandfather. He claims the gun just went off and the result was one less 12 year old on the earth. He was wearing a yellow rain slicker. Not a pretty sight.

My opinion, if I catch you pointing that thing at me you better shoot me before I get to you. [img]graemlins/icon_argue.gif[/img] I'm not that interested who someone is in blaze orange on the other canyon, yeah I can see them that's good enough for me. If I want to see if it's my dad then I'll look through the binos. Only point guns where you intend on shooting them.

tc

[Bounty Hunter]

People need to learn to carry and use their binoculars more. I think some rude gestures would be appropriate the next time you are scoped.

[Timber]

I got scoped about 5 years ago with my young son with me. we were duck hunting and while walking back to the pickup I see this moron which I new about because he had scoped my brother earlier in the willamete season at about 75 yards. He is walking away from us on the old road so I stopped to wait for him to go on his way. he turns around see's us lifts the rifle to see my gesture of disapproval on my right hand.I walked up to him and told the guy if it ever happened again and he wasn't the one being looked at he would be the hunted not the hunter

[bigshark]

I remember it was 1955 and I was a guest at a place called Potter Valley in Northern California. I was sitting atop a large flat-top of rock watching the dry creek bottom below. Two hunters were pushing it. I continued to glass the area ahead of them. There was a splat in the dirt just in front of me and at the same time a piece of rock hit my boot bottom. A frction of second or so, a rifle shot rang out.
You guessed it, I got shot at. I yelled like crazy and the two people worked their way up to me a little while later. It was a guy and his wife and they were as upset as I was. I do believe it unintentional. The gal swore she shot at a fork horn buck below me and had not seen me at all. I was wearing red and as I recall it was a dumb thing for me to do as half the hills were red colored poison oak bushes and other reddish colored stuff. They were sorry enough and I guess it happen the way she said, I'll never really know. I wanted to believe them.
When I got back to camp, I told the story to those who had brought me along. One of them asked to see the left boot I had on. Darn if the rock that hit it didn't turn out to be a rock but a piece of copper bullet jacket about the size of a small asprin and very thin. The bullet must have broken into pieces and this fragment lodged in the heel. My point is red didn't help me. Hunter orange (which wasn't around) might have. Maybe there is something even better. Heck, this scoping thing is bad news and I don't know how you solve it other than make the regs state something about it and you know thats not likely to help much. If you make glasses manditory that may not help much either. I just have a hard time thinking that some people will scope to try to see something given the limited field of view etc.
Even with the best of colors shouting out that you are a human, I have to guess these empty between the ears types are going to look at you through their scopes. What can be done?

[GutshotApe]

One thing that COULD (not saying it will) be done is to ban scopes alltogether.

If scopes were banned a 200 yard shot with iron sights would become a "long" shot. By limiting hunting technology in that way (similar to "primitive" weapons hunts) more tags and longer seasons could be authorized in addition to having no more scoping incidents.

I've got a gun safe full of rifles, a scoped Ruger .270 and others. But I've killed about 3/4 of my deer over the years with a .30-30 or Rem.870 w/rifled slug bbl. , both with iron sights.

Got a better idea?

[Tilla]

Any more reasons to take up the bow?

BigShark- I used to hunt on top of Mt. Sanhedrin that overlooked Potter Valley from the north.

[fishwhenican]

24 years ago, I was in a canyon in the coast range gutting a nice 4 pt. buck. The pickup was parked at the top of the hill on the landing. another vehicle drove up, the people got out and looked down the hill, then dissappeared. Then they came back and set up a target on the brush pile just below the hill. We yelled at them, but I guess they didn't hear us? After thier first shot, I sent a round in thier direction. Then they left! That same year we were duck hunting along the river, when some kids came out of the brush on the other side about 100 yards away. They pointed at our decoys then started shooting at them with thier 22's. Bullets were bouncing off the water and zinging through the brush where we were crouched. My hunting partner and I didn't say a thing to each other, but as I looked up to see 3 shotshell wads right in a row "hanging" in the air, right next to them was three more. A couple of years later while riding down Hwy 99 home from work I got shot in the leg with a 22 by someone "Target" shooting. I lost 6 weeks of work with a new born child and wife to support. The D.A. let the guy go with a misdemeanor charge ( he didn't even have an Oregon residence address). Any wonder he never showed for trial with just a $100 bail! If you shoot in my direction you better get me with the first shot, cause I'll be shooting back! Thank God it hasn't happened.

[wetaline]

Thats pretty amazing to me... I've been lucky enough to always have private ranch land to hunt on the east side.. so this hasn't been a problem i've encountered... But i would be irrate if it did... and HOW can you effectively hunt w/ out a good pair of Bino's?

Dont have a solution for you Bo'A - but dont stop wearing the Orange.... I'm not sissy about things but having people wearing orange is one of the better things that can be done...

[Salmon Stryker]

I'm with you wetaline (even if you are a cougar). I could never hunt without a good pair of binoculars and don't see how someone could.

[pdxkevin]

I was scoped last year. My response was to dive for cover. How was I to know if they were only trying to look at me throw their scope?

I snuck a look with my binos back across only, to see the guy laughing. I wonder if he would have kept laughing if he was scoped back ?!?!

I wanted to really badly too. I just can't force myself to point my rifle at someone simply because they are an idiot.

Never point your firearm at anyone/thing that you do not intent on destroying. Period.

[Lured In]

While I can't say I am aware of this ever happening to me, I know it is a serious problem. IMO I think this should be monitored like any other unethical hunting behavior. Perhaps if you can get a picture of someone doing this (very hard to do and probably even harder to see in a picture) they could be convicted of some sort of attempted murder.

This is one of many issues we have discussed that again focuses on the stupidity of some and gives all of us a bad name in the public eye. I really wish there was a way to regulate stupidity, but aside from removing them from the gene pool, I can think of no way to change those who practice this behavior.

In the long term, let's get more involved in hunter safety programs with ODFW/WDFW and give kids some real world experiences on what not to do. It also gives IFISH a good name by providing volunteers to help unfunded programs.

[FrogPond]

worse than being scoped is having some fool with open sights point his rifle at you...this happend to me this year near Detroit. I was watching this jack*** walk through the clearcut I was sitting above with my binos, when he saw me. (I was wearing a blaze orange hat, red jacket, and had my red backpack sitting next to me on the ground). He looked right at me, stopped, turned around, took two steps back in the direction he came then raised his open sight rifle pointing directly at me! I dropped my binos and grabbed my gun. All I could think of was that at about 300 yds he was only going to get one round off at me because I do have a scope and know I would not miss. Of course, I never did shoulder my weapon, my dad taught me better than that!
I have been scoped before, but this case really made me mad.
--thanks for letting me vent--

[GutshotApe]

Seems like it would be tough to prove reckless endangerment or anything else just for being "scoped". You don't have to put the crosshairs on the object you're looking at. I know I would feel very uncomfortable if it happened to me but if the object (another hunter) is 1/4 mile away and the crosshairs are held 100' above yet the guy is still visible in the bottom of the scope, is that reckless endangerment? :whazzup:

As I posted earlier, a total ban on scopes would eliminate "scoping" entirely and would allow ODFW to issue more deer & elk tags and/or extend the seasons.

[Killertraylor]

It's technically an assault to point a loaded weapon at someone, although I think the prosecutor might have trouble proving the "intent" element of the crime (presumably the defendant's testimony would be that theyintended to point at a game animal, not at a person). I've been scoped a few times and I got behind the closest tree. I can't think of any way to avoid it - but it definitely helps to wear your orange. I don't have a lot of sympathy for a guy who gets scoped walking through the brush in his brown carthart jacket with his white t-shirt hanging out the back. As Forest Gump would say, stupid is as stupid does....

[Killertraylor]

I wanted to respond to GSA's suggestion about banning scopes. Although I like the idea for responsible hunters, I think there would be far too many people who wouldn't put in the necessary practice to hit a game animal in the vitals with open sights - and limit their shots to distances in which they can hit one. We'd end up with many more wounded animals that escape and die slow painful deaths - something I'm very opposed to.

It also troubles me to limit the effectiveness of the guns that I love to hunt with. I didn't buy a .22-250, .257 Weatherby, .300 Weatherby, .264 Winchester Magnum, or .300 Winchester magnum to limit their range to 100 yards with open sights. The guns are quite capable, and designed for, lethal long distance shots and it would be a shame to have to shoot open sights. If you're going to get rid of scopes, you might as well make everyone shoot .30-30's too.

[GutshotApe]

Killert. - I'm not seriously suggesting a scope ban - yet, anyway.

I don't agree entirely with your point that banning scopes would result in more wounded game due to long shots with open sights. Lots of game is wounded now by scope-equipped hunters - some shooting at game way too far away, some shooting at running animals, you name it. I think people would adjust and overall wastage might not be appreciably higher.

We already have limited technolgy hunts - shotgun-only, archery, muzzleloader, falconry, etc. - and in these hunts seasons and hunter numbers are more liberal than when scoped rifles are allowed.

I've got a .270, a .22-250 and other scoped guns. But I would be willing to leave them in the closet and use the ol' .30-30 if it meant I could hunt my favorite eastern Oregon mule deer canyon every year instead of every two or three. And not get scoped in the bargain!

[Gus Orviston]

Why isn't scoping somebody plane and simple illegal and considered wreckless endangerment.

You aren't just looking through a scope, YOU ARE POINTING A WEAPON.

What is the law here? Would it be taken seriously by a DA?

[Catch 22]

"Pointing a firearm" is a misdemeanor in Oregon. It's that simple. If an officer has reason to believe that someone pointed a firearm at someone else knowing that the they were scoping a human, they will be cuffed and taken away. They will have their weapon confiscated until they have completed probation if found guilty.
If someone points a gun at you and you can tell that they are human with your naked eye, so can they. You have every right to be upset and to call the authorities. They will not be charged with assault, but can be charged with either "Pointing a Firearm" or "Criminal Menacing".

[Killertraylor]

You're right - catch 22. Pointing firearm at another is a crime - the statute provides (ORS 166.190) Any person over the age of 12 years who, with or without malice, purposely points or aims any loaded or empty pistol, gun, revolver or other firearm, at or toward any other person within range of the firearm, except in self defense, shall be fined upon conviction in any sum not less than $10 nor more than $500, or be imprisoned in the county jail not less than 10 days nor more than 6 months, or both....

I meant to say Menacing, not Assault - that's what I used to charge people with when I was a prosecutor when they intentionally attempted to place another person in fear of imminent serious physical injury.

[GutshotApe]

Originally posted by Killertraylor:
I meant to say Menacing, not Assault - that's what I used to charge people with when I was a prosecutor when they intentionally attempted to place another person in fear of imminent serious physical injury.[/QB]

<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helv">Killer - So if I look at someone thru the bottom or edge of my riflescope but have the crosshairs well away from them, and if I don't intend to or don't attempt to place them in fear of serious physical injury, then you wouldn't have prosecuted me?

Seems like there is a major difference between "scoping" - the "innocent" use of scope to see distant objects (oh! its another hunter!) - and pointing a rifle at someone with intent to frighten.

Maybe its because I didn't go to law school.

[Eric W.]

Sorry about that Mr. Secret Service agent. I was just trying to see the President better.......... (famous last words)

[ 11-26-2002, 03:25 AM: Message edited by: Eric W. ]

[Catch 22]

"Pointing a Firearm" is a charge. I don't think it requires intent at all. I don't believe that it matters if the firarm is loaded or not.

"Criminal Menacing" is another charge. I believe it requires fear and intent.

I may be wrong, but this is how it was explained to me.