Sierra Blogging Post Archives

We told you back in August of last year about the unfortunate hunting accident where a 14-year-old boy shot and killed a 54-year-old hiker that he mistook for a bear in Washington State.

The boy, Tyler Kales, now 15 years old, was just sentenced to 30 days in a juvenile detention center after being convicted of second-degree manslaughter. That's nothing compared to the time Kales has spent (and will spend) wrestling with the terrible guilt he must feel.

Could the accident have been prevented if there was a minimum hunting age? In Washington, there's not. Nor is there in 6 other states. In a total of 21 states, kids can hunt unsupervised when they are 12 years old. In 19 of those states, kids can hunt any game - large or small - that's in season.


* Seven states — Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Vermont and Washington — set no minimum age for solo hunting.
* In Texas, kids can hunt alone when they are 9.
* In Alaska, Louisiana and Tennessee, the minimum age for unsupervised hunting is 10, in Missouri it’s 11, and in nine other states it’s 12.

“I was very surprised,” by the lack of a minimum hunting age, said Washington state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, a Seattle Democrat who hikes often with her husband and their golden retriever on the ubiquitous trails of the Evergreen State, in this article on MSNBC. “Right now you could have a 6-year-old get a license and hunt bear,” Kohl-Welles said.

Jim Kessler, policy director and co-founder of the progressive think-tank Third Way, had this to say: “I find it shocking actually that there aren’t laws that prohibit unsupervised hunting by minors. For a lot of families, hunting is passing on values from fathers to sons and it’s about responsibility and there are a lot of good lessons there, but it is far too much responsibility to give to a child or a minor teen, far too much responsibility. You need an adult there.”

Not everyone thinks there should be a change in the law. Some people, like Families Afield spokesman Robert Sexton, think parents should decide when a child is ready to hunt alone. "It’s really parents of minor hunters who must make the call, even when they are older than the law requires," he said. “For instance, my oldest kid is 15 and I don’t have him hunt alone. … He’s just not ready, but I’ve hunted with younger kids who are.”

What do you think? Should there be a minimum unsupervised hunting age in every state? How old is old enough to hunt alone?