Game bird hunting season gets underway

Game bird hunting season begins Saturday and ends Monday, Jan. 19, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources has announced.

Hunting is allowed on weekends and state holidays — Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Department biologists are predicting an average season of bird hunting, with the easing of the drought in many parts of the state. A valid hunting license is required for all game bird hunting on public and private lands.

Hunting is allowed on private lands with the landowner’s permission.

Hawaii’s game birds include four types of pheasants, three types of quail, three types of doves, three types of francolins, chukars and the chestnut-bellied sandgrouse.

Autopsy ordered on body of man from Northwest

WAILUKU » An autopsy has been ordered for an 80-year-old Washington state man who died after he was pulled from the ocean at a Maui beach.

Maui Police say bystanders spotted Alva Sanders of Kennewick at about noon Sunday north of Black Rock in Kaanapali and brought him to shore.

Police and medical rescue personnel took a call for a rescue at 12:10 p.m. Rescue personnel administered CPR, but Sanders was pronounced dead at the scene.

Man dies in fall from truck bed; driver arrested

A 41-year-old Ocean View man died Sunday after he fell from the bed of a pickup truck, Hawaii island police reported.

Hawaii County police said Michael J. Anderson was standing in the bed of a Toyota pickup truck traveling west on Walaka Drive on Saturday when the driver failed to stop at the stop sign at the intersection with Paradise Parkway. The driver then made a sharp left turn into a gravel lot, and Anderson was ejected from the truck bed.

He was found unresponsive on the roadway in the eastbound lane of Walaka Drive.

Anderson was taken to Kona Community Hospital in critical condition and later flown to the Queen’s Medical Center on Oahu, where he was pronounced dead at 9:38 a.m. Sunday.

The driver of the truck, a 45-year-old Ocean View man, was arrested on suspicion of first-degree negligent injury and driving without insurance. He was released pending further investigation.

The case has been reclassified as negligent homicide. An autopsy has been ordered.