Our next guest is Ken Trusley from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Thank you for being here, and welcome to The Junction.

Yes ma'am, thank you.

So can you start by letting our listeners know about your background and what do you do?

Uh, I am a lieutenant with Florida Fish and Wildlife. I've been on for about 15 years. I was an officer for about five years. Then I was an investigator for a little while and then promoted to lieutenant of patrol. And about two years ago I switched over to lieutenant over our investigations unit, uh, the South investigations unit of the Northeast region. So we cover about six counties.

And your chat today, your topic was about hunter. They said hunter accidents, but you call them incidents, right? So what is a hunting incident?

Uh, so hunting incident is typically when, um, Somebody is legally or illegally hunting and they Intentionally, unintentionally, or accidentally injure another person, uh, typically with a firearm.

So, I would think that accidental and unintentionally would be kind of the same thing, but they're not, right? So, like, what's the difference?

So, it's very similar, but we kind of break it down. If it's Accidental, I chalk it up as like an accidental discharge. They did not intentionally point the gun. They did not intentionally squeeze the trigger. Versus an unintentional incident is they purposely and intentionally shouldered the weapon. They purposely and intentionally squeezed the trigger, discharging the firearm. It just struck an unintentional target.

So kind of like a bad shot.

Correct.

So, do you see incidents very frequently?

Um, I would say in our area we have probably two to three a year and throughout the state we probably have between six and seven a year.

And what's going to be the most common type of incident that you see in the field?

Typically for us, it is legal hunters, um, that failed to identify the target or what's beyond it. We have deer hunters and Turkey hunters, hog hunters that, um, accidentally shoot another hunter, whether it be someone in their hunting party or someone that they did not know was there at all.

A lot of like comedy or spoof things that are showing hunters, they always show him with like a beer can in their hand or whatever. So I imagine that there's going to be different factors that increase the risk of these incidents. So what would be the things that you see the most?

Uh, there's always a bunch of different factors. There have been times in the past where there are intoxicants of some sort involved. The biggest factors that I see is a failure to identify their target or what's beyond it and sometimes the victim is not wearing an orange vest, but they're not required to or they're not wearing an orange vest and they are required to. But a lot of times it's a just a failure on the shooter's part to identify what's beyond the target. Sometimes they get amped up their heart rates pumping. They see a big deer they've been hunting all season and it happens to be running. They don't wait for it to stop and take a good controlled shot or it runs in between them and their friend and they don't realize the proximity of their friend. Or we've had some to where the person takes a good controlled shot at what he feels is a safe target but does not realize what's beyond it, and the projectiles continue on behind it and and strike a victim.

So when these incidents happen, do they result in charges? Does it depend on the type of incident and who prosecutes those?

It's all very dependent on the incident location and all the factors involved. Um, But what we do is we investigate it to get all the possible findings that there are all evidence gathered and we put it all together in a very thorough incident report. And then we go to the state attorney and we presented the state attorney and say this is all the facts of the case is all the evidence involved. Um, either you know, these are the violations we've identified or or we can't identify any violations. But either way, we consult with the state attorney and they'll either agree with us or disagree with us. Typically, they're pretty much in line with us. Um, it's very hard to get a, um, if it's, you know, truly unintentional or truly accidental, it's very hard to get a culpable negligence kind of charge in the state of florida. But there's often different license violations, game violations, um, different things like that that occur.

So do you only investigate incidents when it's like a person on person? Or do you also investigate incidents that is an animal injuring a person?

We do. We, we, we do both. Um, we, we call it the wildlife human incident response is what we, when it's a kind of like a hunting incident response, we have a wildlife human incident response. Um, and we have alligators are probably the most common. the most common in my area, but we do have some some bear versus human incidents too. And we investigate those as well and try to find out what was the determining factor. What was the cause of it all?

So these investigations ever end up in identifying illegal hunting activities?

It does. Several times in the past we've had identified that it was either somebody trespassing illegally, somebody that was hunting in a closed season. Um, somebody that even as simple as just a unlicensed hunter that didn't have the proper licensing, which is typically an infraction. It's not, it's not a criminal offense. Um, but I would say a large portion of the, of the ones that I've responded to lately, they've been legal to be where they're at legal season and legally licensed. They were just did not identify their what's beyond their target.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and thank you for what you're doing.

Yes, ma'am. Thanks for having me.