Byline: INSIDE THE OUTDOORS By Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

The musings of hunting and fishing writers seldom make the front pages of America's newspapers. A rare exception occurred when comments by Jim Zumbo - an icon among hunting writers - recently became national news.

Zumbo criticized the use of military-style "assault" rifles by hunters. He said the use of such "terrorist rifles" is bad for the image of hunters and that "state game departments should ban them from the prairies and woods."

"We don't need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them, which is an obvious concern," Zumbo wrote.

His comments generated a firestorm of criticism from military-style gun owners and from National Rifle Association types who accused him of giving comfort to the anti-gun crowd. The Internet soon hummed with talk of boycotting products associated with "Jim Dumbo." Faster than a speeding bullet, Zumbo found himself without his hunting editor job at Outdoor Life, without his TV program and without sponsors.

I'm not going to rehash the debate over whether Zumbo's comments undermined the Second Amendment to the Constitution, or whether the so-called "black rifles," most of which are small caliber (.223), are suitable weapons for hunting. There's plenty of that talk still ricocheting around on the Web, if you're inclined to wade through it.

I'm more interested in the underlying story behind Zumbo's comments about the use of "military-style" rifles by hunters, and in the false impression the controversy may have created in the minds non-hunters.

Many hikers, mountain bikers, etc., are already unduly afraid of being shot if they so much as step into the woods during hunting season.

And reading about the Jim Zumbo controversy may have given such folks the impression that some hunters are now carrying sub-machine guns while hunting deer and elk, and that the woods will soon echo with the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic weapons fire rather than that of woodpeckers hunting for dinner.

Wrong on both counts.

Oregon law prohibits the use of fully-automatic firearms while hunting game animals. (Fully automatic weapons fire multiple shots with one pull of the trigger and continue to fire as long as the trigger is depressed. The ubiquitous AK-47 is capable of fully automatic fire. It can also be used in "semi-automatic" mode. A semiautomatic weapon fires one bullet - and automatically reloads the firing chamber - each time the trigger is pulled.)

Oregon does allow hunters to use semi-automatic firearms, as long as they have a magazine capacity no greater than five cartridges.

Oregon State Police Sgt. Tom Hulett, who supervises fish and game law enforcement in the south Willamette area, says he's been checking hunters for 30 years and has yet to come across a fully automatic weapon in the woods.

"I did catch a guy hunting deer out of season one time with an SKS" (a semiautomatic military carbine with which a 10-round clip is standard)," Hulett said. "He was even using full-metal-jacket bullets."

Under Oregon law, a person with the proper licenses and permits may use an assault-style weapon with large capacity magazine to hunt non-game animals - such as coyotes, jackrabbits and "sage rats." (It was the reported use of such weapons on coyotes and prairie dogs that prompted Zumbo's Internet outburst.)

In Oregon, the most-likely location for such hunting would be the High Desert country east of the Cascades, where jackrabbits, coyotes and prairie dogs roam.

"We really don't run into that many people with high-capacity AR-15s" or other military-style rifles, said Sgt. Dave Pond of the Oregon State Police office in Bend. And the few hunters game troopers have observed shooting high-capacity weapons have generally been squeezing off a single round at a time rather than "spraying" bullets.

In other words, hunting with "terrorist rifles" doesn't appear to be much of a story in Oregon.

No doubt Jim Zumbo wishes it had never become a national story.

Mike Stahlberg can be reached at mstahlberg@guardnet.com.