Hunter shoots dog, then dog's owner shoots him

[CHAUKA]

Wow!

Not sure what to make of this mess?

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08317/927266-100.stm

Hunter shoots dog, then dog's owner shoots him
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
By Jim McKinnon, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A man faces a preliminary hearing tomorrow on charges that he shot a man who wounded his pet dog while hunting coyote Sunday in Fayette County.

George A. Bodnovich, 42, of Brownsville, is charged with aggravated assault, simple assault and reckless endangerment.

The charges stem from the shooting at about 4 p.m. Sunday of Jonathan B. Harmon.

The two men gave state police divergent stories about the shooting, though they agreed on one point.

Mr. Harmon had been hunting coyote near the Hi-To Sportsman's Club in Georges when he mistook Mr. Bodnovich's pet dog, Seneca, for a coyote.

Mr. Harmon, interviewed in a hospital room by investigators, said he did not realize until he came upon his fallen prey that he had shot a dog, according to a police affidavit.

Seneca had been wearing an orange vest at the time it was shot.

Mr. Harmon told police that as he got closer to the dead animal he saw Mr. Bodnovich running toward him and firing a gun.

Mr. Harmon said he believes he was shot in the leg as he hopped on his ATV and tried to drive away.

In Mr. Bodnovich's version in the affidavit, he had been hiking with friends when he heard the shot, ran toward the sound and found Mr. Harmon fleeing with a rifle in his hands.

The suspect said he saw Mr. Harmon crouch behind his ATV and aim his rifle at the pet owner.

Two shots were fired at the ATV before Mr. Harmon yelled for the suspect to stop shooting. The hunter raised his hands and Mr. Bodnovich took the hunting rifle from him, the affidavit said.

Mr. Bodnovich said he noticed a pistol in Mr. Harmon's waistband. He believed the hunter was reaching for the second gun, so the suspect said he fired another shot, striking Mr. Harmon in the leg.

Mr. Bodnovich is free on $50,000 bond, pending a hearing tomorrow before District Judge Randy Abraham in McClellandtown.


First published on November 12, 2008 at 12:16 pm

[jahwarrior72]

sounds like a class A clusterfuck.

[JDshoots]

Clusterfuck??

Harmon is lucky he's alive.
This is why you should have a spare magazine for a tactical reload.

[moose]

WTF that is one crazy set of stories.....well, at least the dog was smart enough to be wearing orange!

[GunLawyer001]

Any man who shoots a dog while that dog is wearing a blaze orange vest, deserves to be shot himself. He's a danger to the rest of the world. A dog in an orange vest looks like a coyote about as much as I look like a coyote, and the sorts of assholes who fire lethal weapons without being sure of their targets absolutely deserve some return fire.

I can't tell you how much contempt I feel for people who shoot at "movement" instead of targets that they know for sure they can legally take. It's never "Anything Brown Season", is it? That's just lousy sportsmanship, and it's reckless endangerment. That's how that woman in New England got shot standing in her own backyard because she was wearing white mittens, and the dipshit hunter saw "something white" which he assumed was a legal whitetail deer so he shot blind and killed the woman. That's like seeing "something red" and assuming it's a 2004 Ferrari.

I'm a proponent of lifetime bans on hunting for idiots who make potentially lethal mistakes. People like this invariably tell you that they've been hunting since they were kids, which makes their failure to have picked up even the most basic safety habits inexplicable.

I also despise hunters who drive to the scene of the target. That's not sport, that's like paying your date cash for sex. He might as well hunt by buying a goat and chaining it to a tree.

[MOUNTAINORACLE]

This is the kind of BS that makes all hunters look like A**holes.
This also is the reason I post my land NO HUNTING.

oracle

[Diggler]

Sucks the guy's dog got killed, but the owner was WAY out of line.

You don't run at a guy shooting at him because he mistakenly shot your dog. No threat. I doubt he even had the right to hold him at gunpoint, let alone take his rifle.

I know it was probably all done because of emotions, but that's going to screw him.

[LowFlyer]

A man faces a preliminary hearing tomorrow on charges that he shot a man who wounded his pet dog while hunting coyote Sunday in Fayette County.

Mr. Harmon told police that as he got closer to the dead animal he saw Mr. Bodnovich running toward him and firing a gun.

Do you think the press needs to get the facts straight themselves???

Yeah, like that will ever happen..................

[GunLawyer001]

Sucks the guy's dog got killed, but the owner was WAY out of line.

You don't run at a guy shooting at him because he mistakenly shot your dog. No threat. I doubt he even had the right to hold him at gunpoint, let alone take his rifle.

I know it was probably all done because of emotions, but that's going to screw him.

I guess we're showing our biases here, because you're believing the other guy's story, the reckless hunter who shot a dog that was wearing an orange safety vest. The defendant's story is that the reckless guy who just shot the dog was armed and pointing a gun at him, then he reached for a second gun. If true, which of those is not a self-defense situation, having a loaded rifle pointed at you, or having a reckless loser suddenly reach for his backup piece?

And you're attributing his act of shooting at a target that he completely failed to identify as a "mistake", while I would call it "he just didn't give a damn what he was killing".

A "mistake" is estimating the range at 100 yards when it's 150 yards. A "mistake" is adding 64 and 46 and getting 100. "Reckless indifference" is shooting at anything that moves, or shooting a dog because you thought the owner wasn't near enough to catch you before you could hop on your ATV and flee the scene. All the criminal defendants admit their "mistakes" after they're caught, all the careless parents of thugs say that their boy made "some mistakes", but what I see is regret at being caught.

[jahwarrior72]

reminds me of a movie i just saw, called "Red"; some guy's dog gets killed by some punk kids, and he goes on the warpath.

i don't know; i know if some asshole shot my dog, i know i don't have the right to shoot him, but i'd sure think about it.


and hope no one was around....