RUNNING LIGHTS, HUNTER’S ORANGE AND A LITTLE COMMON SENSE
By Mike Faulk

TWRA Officer Bill Robbins issued me a citation a few years back that displeased me so. It was duck season. The ramp where I launch my jon boat is 500 yards from my duck blind. There would be 3 – 6 boats launching upstream at the VFW boat ramp with hunters bushwhacking ducks. It should have been a good morning to do a little decoying.

Those bushwhackers hug the banks working around log falls to jump shoot ducks from their boats. In order to succeed, a good oarsman must jag the boat in and out around obstacles in silence. Any movement other than the natural drift of the boat sends a warning to wary ducks hearing shotgun blasts up and down the river. Such boats travel at two to four miles per hour.

I was a little late arriving. It was already legal shooting hours (30 minutes before sunrise to sunset). I motored rather than oared across the river to the blind and pitched half a dozen decoys out. It never occurred to me that I should rig my running lights.

About mid-morning TWRA officers came through on patrol to check the hunters up and down the Holston. This was routine. I had come to expect a couple of inspections per season.

The usual drill involves checking the weapons to make sure the plug prevents the use of more than three shells in the shotgun, checking licenses for both state and federal duck stamps, inventoring the ducks harvested to make sure the types and quantities are within limits, and verifying no lead shot shells were being used. Sometimes boat registrations were reviewed and the sufficiency of life preservers confirmed.

This morning, I was asked an unusual question: “what time did you come in this morning”? After my answer, I was informed I was being written a citation for failure to use running lights before sunrise.

I pled my case: it was legal hunting hours, if you can see enough to identify and shoot a duck you can see well enough to avoid a boat without running lights, no one in his right mind would motor up or down the river in such low water – let alone in the early morning during duck season, running lights would spook any ducks, I was legal in all respects, etc. etc. etc. My arguments failed.

Disgusted, I considered fighting the citation. I try really hard to hunt legally and ethically. I make sure my guests in the boat or blind do the same. I follow Dad’s admonition: “there is no substitute for and there may never be a lapse in safety.” This was a technicality that made no sense in that 30 minute period before official sunrise when it was already light enough to shoot at ducks.

After a debate within myself, I decided to just pay the fine and be done with it. Since I’m a lawyer in my day job, I knew the judge would have to recuse himself. I knew the District Attorney’s office could do the same and a special prosecutor and special judge would have to be brought in just so I could make my point. It wasn’t worth it to fight this rule that seemed silly at the time.

On this cold, foggy December morn, I was reminded of that rule. On this day, duck season and deer season overlap. There are numerous hunters along the banks of the Holston – some seeking deer, some ducks.

Several volleys of shotgun blasts rang out as soon as the legal shooting hour arrived. It was too foggy to see more than 60 yards. The duck hunters in boats were able to get up on the birds within range because of the fog. I startled the occupants of two boats as they passed through the sluice just beneath my duck blind by wishing them good luck. Until I spoke, my presence was not detected.

Then, from downstream, the unmistakable drone of a jet-propelled motor broke the morning silence the way shotgun blasts had earlier. At near full speed, the boat roared upstream passing the mouth of the sluice without my ever seeing the boat.

I knew it was there from the noise. I knew it was close to the south side of the main channel of the river because of the waves its wake sent down the sluice. I knew it was a disaster waiting to happen. I knew a fool was at the throttle.

The logs that lodge on the bottom up and down the stream are a constant danger. Sometimes they are visible – sometimes not. The ones just below the waterline are every bit as dangerous as the ones that can be seen. Because of TVA power generation schedule, upstream releases continually change the location of those logs. The same is true for ever migrating gravel bars.

The crash could be heard all up and down the river. The jet motor stopped at the same instant. I listened for any sounds from upstream expecting shouts for help. Within a couple of minutes, a boat of duck hunters entered the sluice and pulled their boat up onto one of the gravel bars. They exited the boat and used the bottom of a bleach bottle to bail water from the boat. Exiting the blind to assist, they told me how the wake of the boat passing them had nearly swamped their boat. They were wet.

After confirming they were alright, I knew it was up to me to check on the other boat. These duck hunters were drifting with only oars for propulsion. They couldn’t get upstream to where we had heard the crash. The water level was too low for me to get my boat out of the front of the sluice and too low for me to motor out the length of the sluice – about a mile – to the main channel. I floated out and then motored slowly up the river in the dense fog.

I reached the area were I thought the crash had occurred. I called and called but heard no one. I ran a grid pattern back and forth over a section of at least half a mile and found nothing – nobody and no boat.

The fog cleared about 10:30 a.m. I checked the river all the way from the VFW boat ramp to my blind and again found nothing. Not knowing what else I could do, I called the Sheriff’s Department to fill them in should someone file a missing persons report on a boater or boaters.

As I conducted this fruitless search, I remembered the frustration over that citation years ago. Many of our laws make little sense. Running lights this morning would have done nothing to keep the careless soul from roaring up the Holston in a dense fog. Running lights aren’t required on boats that are not under propulsion. But they might have kept the operator of the jet boat from swamping the duck hunters.

Making my way back to the cabin, I thought I’d try to have a safe hunt the rest of my day. I had a sickening feeling about the jet boater and his occupants, if any. I’d just break out the bow and pick a ground blind close by the cabin.

As I put away the rifle and took off my orange cap and vest, another less-than-ideal law came to mind. I was not required to wear hunter’s orange since I was going to bow hunt. But I was going to be in the deer woods with hunters wielding high powered rifles anxious to take home a year’s worth of venison and a trophy for their wall – hunters who had to wear hunter’s orange.

The rule requiring only the hunters with firearms to wear blaze orange doesn't seem to me to address the issue. Anyone in the woods during rifle or muzzleloader season would benefit from wearing hunter’s orange – not just the ones with firearms. I make no claim on having all the answers. But I sometimes wonder what the regulators were thinking when some of our laws were devised.

On this day, I decided to stay at the cabin, out of the woods, and off the water were I could safely write this story.