BANGOR (AP) – The shooting of a Hermon woman in her backyard by a hunter 20 years ago changed the lives of two families forever and generated a firestorm of debate. It also changed people’s thinking about hunting safety – for the better, according to lawmakers and wardens.

On Nov. 15, 1988, Karen Wood was outside, possibly putting laundry on a clothes line, when two shots rang out. The mother of twin 1-year-old girls was killed.

A grand jury initially refused to indict the hunter, Donald Rogerson of Bangor, who said he was shooting at a deer. He was later indicted by a second grand jury but was ultimately acquitted of manslaughter during a high-profile trial that drew national attention.

Paul Jacques, a state legislator at the time, said the shooting changed attitudes. A law outlining standards of conduct for hunters was adopted seven months after Rogerson’s acquittal. More people began attending hunter safety courses.

“When the acquittal came through, we asked, ‘What was it in the law that did not make it clear that what Mr. Rogerson did was a problem?”‘ Jacques said.

‘Enough is enough’

Before Wood’s death, people never seemed to get outraged over a hunter shooting another hunter. That wasn’t uncommon back then. But attitudes changed for Jacques, and for others, when the victim wasn’t a hunter but a young mother in her own backyard.

“The proverbial manure hit the fan,” Jacques told the Bangor Daily News. “And people said, Enough is enough. As long as you guys were killing each other, we didn’t care. But when you start involving an innocent housewife hanging her clothes, something’s got to be done.”

At the time, a person who illegally shot a moose in Maine had to pay a $2,000 fine upon conviction. But there was only a $200 fine for shooting another hunter, Jacques said.

Jacques, who now serves as deputy commissioner of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, joined others including John Marsh, a former head game warden who was then in the Legislature, in addressing those problems with the Wood case verdict serving as powerful incentive for change.

A new law that delineated a standard of conduct that a prudent hunter must abide by, including proper target identification, was adopted in 1991.

Instead of hunting accidents, the nomenclature for hunting deaths became “hunting homicides.” And the Maine Warden Service invested time and money to send wardens to specialized schools that deal with hunting-related shootings.

Gregory Sanborn, now the state’s deputy chief game warden, said all of those efforts have paid off.

During the 20 years before Wood was killed, a total of 67 people were shot and killed in Maine as a result of hunting incidents, according to the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. During the next 20 years, 13 people died as a result of hunting-related shootings.

Kevin Wood, the victim’s husband, now remarried and living in Iowa, said he was shocked by the public debate over his wife’s shooting.

For him, there was no debate: Rogerson was negligent. But critics faulted Karen Wood for going near woods during hunting season, for failing to wear blaze orange as hunters were required to do, and for wearing white-palmed mittens that may have appeared to have been deer tails.

Wood was stunned to learn that when the verdict was announced over the loudspeaker at a junior high school soccer match, the crowd cheered Rogerson’s acquittal.

He said the fact that he and his wife were outsiders – having recently moved to Maine – played a role in people’s perception.

“Based on (my) life’s experiences, that provincial attitude of protecting their own and victimizing the outsiders, I don’t think I’ve ever seen in any other place I’ve lived. Or certainly not experienced it to that degree,” said Wood, who has lived in several states during his life, including Virginia, Arizona and New York, in addition to Iowa and Maine.

Sanborn thinks things might have turned out differently if the current system along with the 1991 target identification requirements had been in place 20 years ago.

“The jury didn’t feel that the burden of proof was met. And a lot of that is social. What is the social climate, and did this guy act outside of what the norm is?” Sanborn said. “At the time the answer was no. I think if the same thing happened today, the same set of circumstances, it would be a different outcome.”

As for Rogerson, he said it might have been easier if he’d been sentenced to jail. Instead, he continued working at a local supermarket and continued living in his Bangor home.

He said some hold the acquittal against him.

“If I had been found guilty and gone to jail, it wouldn’t have bothered me as much as it would have affected my family,” the 65-year-old Rogerson said earlier this week. “I was willing to accept any consequences if that was the case.”

He maintains to this day that he saw a deer and fired at it. Then he fired again at “flags” that looked like a deer’s tail, a fateful decision he wishes he could take back.

He said he was willing to speak to the newspaper because the retelling of his story could serve as a cautionary tale to other hunters. “Make sure of your target,” he said. “Just be sure what you see.”

Copy the Story Link