deer

Accidents happen, but when they do while hunting they can have a devasting effect.

Just by the nature of the tools involved hunting can be a dangerous activity. Guns and ammunition are designed to do one thing, and they are very efficient at it. Even archery, with its razor-sharp broadheads and thumb-severing crossbow strings, has the potential for injury.

Texas hunting is relatively safe, or at least it has become that way, with hunting deaths now the oddity. Accidents, however, still happen.

For the third consecutive year Texas had just one hunting fatality in 2022, a number that is astounding when you consider 1.2 million hunters in the state.

There were also 14 non-fatal accidents, the second lowest number on record behind 2021 in which there were just 11. Both are a long way from the old, pre-hunter education days when hunting was wild and wooly in Texas. At its worst, in 1968, 37 hunters died and 68 others were wounded.

The state’s single fatality last year was tragic and possibly preventable. It also serves as a reminder about individual gun safety.

According to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department report the accident appears to have occurred when a young hunter hunting alone mishandled their rifle in a deer blind and shot themselves.

The non-fatal accidents, which in many cases were probably lucky just to be that, fell under the normal causes of hunters swinging on another hunter (five incidents), three cases of discharging a gun in or near a vehicle, three cases of careless handling of a firearm, and one case each of a faulty firearm, mistaking another hunter for an animal, and careless handling of a crossbow. There were also two accidents involving bowhunters falling from their stands that are not including in the accident list.

As usual most of the swinging outside a safe zone accidents occurred while bird hunting. However, one case sticks out as being different. Eight hunters in Trinity County were scattered around a field shooting at running pigs when one hunter shot toward another striking them in the collar bone/lower neck area with a .45-caliber bullet.

Accidents around vehicles often involve putting a loaded gun inside a case or the vehicle before or after a hunt, but one last year involved a group riding from in a truck from stock tank to stock tank duck hunting in Brown County. The driver had placed a loaded shotgun next to him, pointed upwards and with the safety off. The gun discharged when hitting a bump shooting the hunter in the arm.

The crossbow accident was unusual for Texas, but considering the dangerous potential for the weapon it is not surprising. In this case a hunter in Denton County was sitting in a stand with the bow pointed down when he accidentally discharged it sending a bolt through his left ankle. He pulled the bolt from the ankle and started bleeding. He called 911 and while trying to exit the stand passed out and was found 50 minutes later 20 feet in the air. He was eventually airlifted to a local hospital.

The one accident that happened that was not preventable was when a 20-gauge over/under that misfired and exploded causing damage to the hunter’s hand. There was no sign the hunter had accidentally loaded the gun with the wrong ammunition.

The variety and sometimes inventive accidents are a warning that hunters need to be vigilant anytime they are in the field, and the old saying of always treating a gun like it is loaded needs to be preached often whether it is in camp, getting in and out of a vehicle and in the blind.

It is easy to get lazy and not unload a gun when not hunting, but it only takes one mistake to not just ruin the hunt but a life.

Load a gun only when set up and ready to hunt. Unload it immediately when the hunt ends before leaving the blind or field.

Yes, it is legal to deer hunt from a vehicle on private property in Texas and while it can be dangerous hunters can make it safer by always traveling with safety on and the bolt open and never closing it until the gun is out the window and on the target.

Mistaking a hunter for game is an accident that should never happen. With all the gear hunters own these days having a decent pair of binoculars to identify a target instead of using a rifle scope is a must.

It is also incumbent on other hunters to know where they are on a lease and never walk into another’s line of fire from their blind. If needing to track wounded game in the direction of another blind contact them first or back out until they finish their hunt. Either way may benefit the recovery effort by taking the pressure off the animal.

The same holds true while bird hunting. Do not walk into the line of fire of another hunter.

If hunters take the time to prioritize safety maybe we can get to a point the worst case is hunters being pelleted by raining shot and fatalities do not occur.