For Gosh sakes be careful

[Patrick L]

I just wanted to share this with the forum, in hopes it may save you all some grief...

Yesterday it finally happened. I was in a hunting party that had an "accident." Fortunately no serious injuries, the Good Lord was watching over us all. This is not a rant or a sermon, just a reminder that what we do IS inherently dangerous, and constant vigilance is a never ending necessity.


Long story short, on a pheasant hunt someone got peppered. The shooter is an extremely experienced hunter, well over 30 years and known to me for almost that long. I have hunted with him, shot skeet and clays with him for years and he has ALWAYS demonstrated exceptionally safe gun handling. I wouldn't be hunting and shooting with him if he didn't. Anyhow, myself and one of the others (total of four in our party) started to move in the direction the dog was telling us she wanted to go, when a bird flushed over by the dog and the other two. Somehow the shooter lost his sense of where we were, swung on the bird, and the guy closer to me got peppered. Distance was about 50-60 yards (fortunately!) The shot didn't even penetrate his clothing, but we didn't know that until he stripped out of his vest and shirts(about 3 layers.) He said the impact HURT though, and we weren't sure about the penetration until we checked. His arm had several little red welts on it. Upon closer examination I saw his outer shirt had actually stopped the shot, the pellets were clearly visible on the outer fabric.

Needless to say the shooter felt like absolute dirt. I understand. I could only imagine. I have had NDs on the range (only two in my lifetime) and I felt like garbage when that happened, but mine only put a hole in a shooting bench and a safety wall respectively, never endangered a person. I don't want to even THINK about what potentially hurting a person would feel like.

In case you were wondering, we all were wearing copious amounts of blaze orange

I guess my point is, it can happen. And it often happens to VERY experienced shooters/hunters, not beginners and neophytes as you might expect. I think sometime we get overconfident because we are so experienced, and then in a split second something can happen.

Again, no serious injury, just a few welts. Thank God he was wearing protective eyewear (although there was no indication of the glasses being hit.) Even his demeanor and humor held, he did more than anyone to console the devastated shooter, and convince him that things can happen, learn from it, and get back on the horse.

Thank you God for looking out for our group, and thank you for our personal Christmas miracle.

[Handloader109]

Got to be careful. When you are moving and a group, it is easy to get in the way of a potential shot. But the shot shouldn't occur. We've been rained on when at dove shoots several decades ago, but from 3x or 4x that distance and not at us, just over us, and it is disconcerting nonetheless.

Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk

[rockrat]

Just takes a moment for something to take place. Glad your hunting companion is OK and not 20 yards closer.

Not been "peppered", but the tree I was walking past, the upper part was

[atfsux]

Indeed, if you spend enough time around guns, it is not IF you will have an accident, it is WHEN. In my over 45 years around guns, I have had 4 accidental discharges, I am not proud to say. I was observing the rules of safety when these happened, so no damage other than pride and nerves ever occurred. There is no such thing as paranoia when it comes to firearm safety.

[MaryB]

Make SURE your hunting party members know the gun they are using...

Early 80's a friend asked if his cousin could go pheasant hunting with us... "Has he hunted before? Does he know how to handle a shotgun?" "He says he has and does"... okay first clue... he says... We walked a 5 mile stretch of wildlife management area/railroad right of way and got back to the truck. As we are unloading his gun goes off 2 feet from my right ear. Turns out he had the gun off safe the entire time we were walking... he didn't bother reading the manual on how the safety worked and had never been hunting in his life. He got to walk 2 miles back to town without his gun that we locked in the truck as we continued to hunt. I have 50% hearing loss/tinnitus thanks to him...

[WILCO]

Glad he's okay.

[Jedman]

Back in 1977 myself and 4 others rented a cabin for a week on Drummond Island in upper Michigan for hunting ducks, grouse , snowshoe rabbits and crow. On a grouse/ rabbit hunt the 5 of us were hunting staying about 15 yards apart in what we thought was a strait line. The cover was thick so even with orange you couldn’t always see everyone so we would makes sounds every 5 or 10seconds so we could keep track of where everyone was.
One of the guys seen a grouse running on the ground and decided to shoot at it ended up shooting twice before he got it. On his second shot one of the guys ( the shooters brother in law ) yelled out STOP IM HIT ! so we all stopped walking and went towards the guy that was hit.
He luckily was only hit on bare skin areas with a couple pellets and wasn’t hurt bad other than the stinging . The guy that shot was so devastated that for the rest of the week he only hunted with an empty gun to punish himself.
One of the pellets actually stuck into the wood stock of the guys Win. 1200 shotgun and to this day still has the gun with the pellet and the story has been told many times.

I have been on several other bird & rabbit hunts where someone in the party shot in a unsafe direction and we always stop and go over the rules of where you can shoot and when game flushes whose has the safe shot and sometimes no one does and you have to hold fire.

For that reason I do not hunt any of the state game areas that release pheasants as the hunters are mostly crazy and don’t have a clue what a safe shot is or isn’t.

Jedman

[lightman]

I'm glad your friend wasn't seriously injured. Hopefully the shooter can put it behind him and carry on.

[armoredman]

OUCH!. Yes, I had my oopsie hunting was MANY years ago, involving me not checking a rifle handed to me to ensure it was on safe OR empty, and while watching the other hunter tie his boot, my thumb just casually slipped into the trigger guard of the upraised rifle and BOOM. Hair trigger, too. Muzzle was up, nobody hurt, but it sure woke ME up.
A buddy of brother was dove hunting about 40m years ago wearing white pants, bent over in a field while picking up a bird and BOOM...a load of birdshot right into the fundament from an elderly gent. IIRC, Brackie spent some time laying on his stomach after that...

[MaryB]

Duck hunting one year, dudes across the slough knew we were there, they saw our decoys and us retrieving birds. They started peppering us with shot that came down after they did long shots at birds over us...We hollered they didn't quit... I was a ham radio operator and had a handheld radio with, had a friend call the game warden who did a belly crawl up behind them as they unloaded at us again...

Game warden stood up behind them, announced himself and they started swearing at us and complaining that all the birds were going to our decoys... game warden laughed and told them they need to learn how to setup a decoy spread and look at what the winds will be that morning and to hand over their guns, go pick their decoys up and put them in his truck, and to come to him one by one to be arrested... They lost everything, guns, decoys, a newer Suburban, even their dog was taken, no hunting privileges for life... seems that intentionally shooting at other people is frowned on...

And 4 shot STINGS as it comes back down!!!!! Broke skin a few times... big city slob hunters who didn't think rules applied to them, the judge didn't take their excuses very well and told them to knock it off or face contempt.

Something I have ran into 4 times in the 53 years I have been hunting... every time it was someone from the Twin Cities who ignored no trespassing signs, used rifles in the shotgun slug only deer zone, one tried to take a deer out of the back of our truck claiming he shot it... dude that is an impossibility unless you had trespassed 4 miles into our deer lease... shot it 100 feet from where it dropped(lung tissue etc where it was shot as evidence)...

[MrWolf]

Was 17 and went deer hunting with my uncle and his friend. I was aways from them and a few hours had passed. I was on the ground and decided to go up on a tree branch/stump a few feet above me. Never saw the ice and I slipped. Boom. I had the safety on but when I fell I must have hit the switch down (Charles Daly skeet gun) with my palm and finger found the trigger. No one was near me, the shot went into the ground but it scared me good. Never hunted with anyone else after that as it had spooked me that much that I could have hurt/killed another.

[dverna]

Unsafe gun protocols work until they don't.

There are ignorant people out there and then there are stupid people. You can't fix stupid. Ignorant people can be trained, but if they do not want to change, they remain a danger to everyone.

There are also people who know how to be safe but will not intercede when someone is unsafe. I see that at the camp I used to be a member of. The camp owner is a gregarious guy who is fun to be with expect for 5 days a year when he rifle hunts. He is careless/ignorant with loaded guns in camp. They value their friendship with him, more than each other's safety.

[Rapier]

My idea of fun is not to be shot or shot at.

[firefly1957]

First time I got hit by a shot pattern I was about 8 years old tp young to hunt I was with my father quail hunting in Arizona . Guy that hit us may have been 100 yards away no skin broken but it felt like getting hit with a baseball bat!

I Small game hunted a short time with a southern boy that I worked with he hit me with a few pellets shooting at a deer our of shear stupidity I never hunted with him again.

Once I did hit myself with a single #2 shot I fired my 12 gauge muzzle loader high in a oak tree at a squirrel and it came down on the top of my shoulder it stung and left a welt . None of the rest of the shot came down near me I think that pellet was deflected going up .