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fifidanon

First Day of Deer Season with Rifles - Do I Lay Low?

fifidanon
17 years ago

Hello all,

I am a regular poster on the "Building a Home" and "Buying and Selling Homes" Forums, as we have just moved into a new construction home two months ago. But I have a problem, or a concern, and these forums are always so helpful and full of really good, caring people who always come through for me, so here I am venturing over here:

Tomorrow is the first day of deer hunting season with rifles here in PA. It is such a big deal where I live that they actually close the schools this same Monday each year. When I first moved up here 5-1/2 years ago, I thought it was just a nice extra day for Thanksgiving holiday, little did I know!

Here is my issue: My daughters are scheduled to have their Christmas picture taken tomorrow at the Steamtown Mall in Scranton, which requires me to get on Route 80 West from the Pocono area. I swore I wasn't going to schedule on this day anymore, after noticing last year or the year before that there were actual hunters crossing the highway, guns and all, (trucks and jeeps parked all along the highway) to hunt in areas off of the interstate.

I made a comment to my dh that we were lucky we didn't get hit by some stupid hunter's stray bullet. A day later there was a report on the news that a woman north of Allentown had been shot in the leg by a hunter's stray bullet while driving home from work. Also in PA, a seventh-months-pregnant woman was shot in the head by a hunter's stray bullet while sitting in her car in her driveway - fortunately it did not penetrate her skull and she did not lose her baby. Again in PA, in Nazareth I believe, a man was shot by a stray bullet while sitting eating pizza in a pizzeria, a bullet later determined to have been fired from a mile away.

So, I told my dh I was afraid to go tomorrow, especially since it is the first day of the rifle season, and all these hepped-up hunters, - experienced and amateur, careful and idiots alike - will be out there, and there will be close to one million of them across the state. ONE MILLION. I kid you not.

My dh says stop worrying, stop scaring the children, nothing will happen. My daughters are 9 and 7 - they saw the hunters all over the highway first-hand - they are old enough to get it and my 7-year-old is scared. My dh told her everything was going to be fine, I PROMISED her everything would be fine. I know statistics show we are 99.99999% going to be fine - but yet I am truly, really scared!

Can anyone tell me if I am being ridiculously paranoid, or should I just call and postpone the picture and stay home all day (I am not kidding about staying home), at least for the first day of the season, and let the overly-excited first-day'ers get it out of their system?

I've no idea what anyone out there can tell me, I just know it is 1:00 am and I am here on the computer typing and worrying instead of peacefully sleeping in my bed!

Thanks in advance for any feedback, advice, support, anything!

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