Hunting season is upon us, can hunters see you?
Welcome fall! It seems to have come upon us fast, and with it comes hunting season. IDL lands provide a wide variety of recreational opportunities and one of the favorites is hunting. Did you know that Idaho is 5th in the US for registered hunters.
As IDL employees, many of our responsibilities require us to be in the woods and other popular hunting grounds. Normally, we're pretty safe and aware of our surroundings. But during hunting season we have to be extra vigilant about how we go about our business.
Wearing dark colors such as brown, black, or green make it much more difficult for hunters to see you. Wearing blaze orange ensures that you will be seen from a long distance away and in various conditions.
- Be safe, be seen.
- Make your presence known.
- Be courteous.
A committee of vision experts from state, military and medical fields determined Hunter Orange to be the most visible under the widest variety of conditions by the widest variety of people.
Select the link below for a short video with really great information and insight as to how blaze orange can make a major difference.
The bottom line is, the more blaze orange you wear, the more visible you are in the forest and fields.
IDL provides field going employees with high visibility t-shirts, sweatshirts, baseball caps and stocking hats. If your responsibilities require you to be in the field and you have not received high visibility clothing, please contact me immediately.
The Effectiveness of Blaze Orange
Driving
I know we talk about driving a lot. But imagine how many miles IDL employees drive, especially between March and October? In addition, the hours that we work during this time makes us more tired than usual making driving even more dangerous.
We drive long distances to provide fire suppression support to many states and Canada. And our foresters drive every day to get to state lands to conduct their work. Our cache employees drive long distances delivering supplies to fires. A couple years ago, cache drivers drove 280,000 miles during fire season!
- Each year, drowsy driving accounts for about 100,000 crashes, 71,000 injuries and 1,550 fatalities, according to the National Safety Council.
As someone that has driven home from many fire assignments, I know how tired we get at the end. It's when we decompress after many 16-hour days and when the lack of sleep and non-stop working catches up to us. But that isn't the only reason that we are higher risk for drowsy driving, we simply do a lot of driving while conducting all IDL business, putting us at higher risk for a drowsy driving accident.
Don't push yourself. Be aware of your limitations and conduct self-checks. If you are driving and become tired, pull over. Get out and walk around or take a nap (in a safe location of course). We want you to come home safely from whatever you have been doing.
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