Originally Posted by
Fox
The issue I have is what it shows to those who are not in the know.
If you bring up your shotgun on a pheasant and realize it is a hen you drop your gun and point it in a safe direction.
Once you determine that the game is not legal game you should pull your gun down from the game so as to not have any risk of anything happening.
We are taught that every gun is always loaded until you personally PROVE that it is not.
Based on this picture the assumption that I need to make is that the rifle is loaded, the safety is off and the guys finger is on the trigger. The reason I have to assume this is that without any context this is the worst case situation.
The photo in question would have been find if the guy had a bull tag, but since he did not I see a risk here for an unintentional discharge with horrible consequences.
This photo shows that using your rifle scope as binoculars is ok, which is the opposite of what we were taught in our hunters safety course. This is a photo representing the same thing as glassing a field edge with a fully loaded rifle.
This has nothing to do with any self righteous anything, this person took a really cool picture, but based on safety it was out of line and should not be represented as the right thing to do in the situation. I am sure with context this hunter was 100% safe and there was no risk of hurting the animal, but I have to assume the worst case due to what I have been taught about safety.