Tree stand safety is going to be a focus of the Game Commission in 2018.
Photo: Howard Communications
Education rather than enforcement, that’s how the Pennsylvania Game Commission is going to promote tree stand safety this fall.
Board members have been debating whether to require anyone hunting from an elevated platform on state game lands to wear a safety harness.
Increasing numbers of falls are the reason.
Joseph Smith, a doctor in the intensive care unit at Geisinger Medical Center, counted tree stand accidents between 1987 and 2015, using information from the Pennsylvania Trauma System Foundation. He found nearly 1,300.
That’s a minimum, and likely a very conservative one, he told board members in December, as it accounts for only falls that led to emergency room visits.
Falls are increasingly common, he added. The rate at which accidents are occurring – defined as falls per 100,000 hunters – has increased consistently since 1987,
To halt that trend, the commission is launching a safety campaign.
The Game Commission’s tree stand safety campaign logo.
It’s going to encourage hunters to “hunt safely, wear a harness” in all of its printed materials, on its social media accounts and on signs in state game lands parking lots.
The commission is also identifying those parts of the state where archery licenses sell in the highest volume. There, billboards will carry the message.
“So we’re really just trying to blanket the state and our license buyers with this educational campaign, reminding them of the importance of the need to wear a harness,” said Steve Smith, director of its bureau of information and education.
Commissioners like the idea, though one stressed that it can’t be a “one shot deal.” Commissioner Jim Daley of Butler County said the agency must promote tree stand safety not just this fall, and not just in hunter education, “but in everything we do” every year going forward.
“This has to be a long-term effort,” Daley said.
That’s as far as some commissioners are willing to go, though.
The proposal requiring harness use on state game lands hasn’t come up for an official vote. It was tabled in January.
It appears likely it’s going to stay on the shelf, too.
Board members disagree on whether it’s a good idea.
One of those opposed to a regulation is commissioner Brian Hoover of Chester County. That’s a change.
Back in January he supported the idea, saying the commission should “set the example” for harness use.
This week, though, at a working group meeting of the board, he offered a different opinion.
“I don’t think any of us are against the thought. And I wouldn’t be afraid to put out a resolution from the commission, basically in support of the use of fall restraint systems, and our commitment toward that,” Hoover said. “But I tend to get a little bit nervous about telling people that they have to wear something.
“If we’re going to tell people what they’re mandated to use, and the circumstances that they have to use it, I think that we’re overstepping ourselves.”
He rides a motorcycle, he noted. Sometimes he wears a helmet, sometimes he doesn’t.
No one should require him to wear one all the time, he said.
The regulation as proposed was too broad anyway, said commissioner Stanley Knick of Luzerne County.
It would apply to anyone hunting from any sort of elevated stand on game lands, he noted. Yet, the odds of falling out of a ladder stand where the seat is surrounded by a rail in front and on both sides are very different than with a climber.
“Every stand is different,” Knick said.
That’s all true, agreed commissioner Michael Mitrick of York County. It’s true, too, that commissioners got some pushback on the proposal from people saw it as a case of “big government” overreaching its bounds, he added.
But there was probably lots of pushback when hunters were first required to wear florescent orange, he said.
“And look at what that has done for hunting,” Mitrick said.
When he first moved to Pennsylvania in 1981, hunting fatalities were an every-year occurrence, he said. That’s no longer the case.
Mandatory harness uses could likewise save lives, he noted. What’s more, if the commission required their use on game lands, he predicted state parks and forests would soon follow suit. Lawmakers might even mandate them everywhere in time, he suggested.
“To me, it’s the responsible thing to do,” Mitrick said.
Commissioners don’t seem likely to vote on the proposal, let alone pass it, however, at their next board meeting in April.
