[Nathanael_Greene]

A truly tragic event. I can't imagine how the father must be feeling.

http://www.local6.com/news/2774627/detail.html

[Guyon]

Thinking it was a hog, Plucknet fired one shot, hitting his son in the back of the head.

There should have been no "thinking," which in this context suggests to me some possibility of doubt. Either the man should have definitively known it was a hog, or he should not have shot. Tragic indeed, but on some levels, I have trouble finding compassion for the father. I feel sorry, most of all, for the fourteen-year-old victim who should have been supervised more closely. I have trouble seeing this horrible event as purely an accident. It is the result of carelessness.

So-called "hunters" like the father, who shoot at movement without CLEARLY identifying their target and what's behind it, give hunters a bad name. They give anti-hunters fodder. They bring tragedies like these upon themselves. They make hunters like me leery of hunting on public land when oftentimes, public land is the only option.

Don't get me wrong. I do feel for the father. I wish he could take back his shot. I wish he did not have to face his living son and wife, for the rest of his life, knowing that he made their lives, and his life, less complete.

For the new hunters on this board, please, please, please don't even put your finger on the trigger until you have, without any shadow of doubt, identified your target as legal game and have determined what's behind it.

[P95Carry]

Dupe' thread ....

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60258

Horrendous and avoidable tragedy .....

[Sunray]

This kind of thing is caused by one thing. Negligence. Up here, it means an instant charge of manslaughter. Unintentional homicide. There's no excuse. He must have been required to take a hunter's safety course. Rule number one is don't shoot until you know what you're shooting at.

[JohnKSa]

For the new hunters on this board, please, please, please don't even put your finger on the trigger until you have, without any shadow of doubt, identified your target as legal game and have determined what's behind it.
Better yet, don't pick up your rifle until you've verified your target using your binoculars.

Target location and identification using your rifle scope is an accident waiting to happen. Don't forget, when you're looking at something through your riflescope, you're also pointing a gun at it. Unless you already know what you are looking at, you've broken the cardinal rule of gun safety by pointing a gun at something without identifying it.

[BIGR]

That is a preventable accident. One must identify without any doubt what they are about to shoot at. This is the reason that I don't hunt on public gamelands anymore. Too many people will shoot at moving bushes or anything that moves.

[Lennyjoe]

I never ever try to identify game using my rifle scope.

Always use binoculars first or wait till you can CLEARLY identify the target with the naked eye.

I know first hand what it feels like to have someone looking at you thru a rifle scope. It aint a good feeling. I seen a reflection so I looked thru my binoculars and there he was. I climbed down the treestand, walked up to the yahoo in the tree and proceeded to rip is back side verbally. He did nothing but apologize constantly.

[Logistar]

There are other dangers too. It's been a while but one of my cousin's was hunting with his best friend. We think the brush caught the trigger as he walked through it. - 12 gauge shotgun point blank to the spine of his friend... well I guess you can figure out what happened from there.

I think there were a couple of "rules" violated there but both had hunted for a long time. I guess he got complacent.

I don't hunt a lot anymore but I have often passed up shots that other's say I should have taken. But unless I am 100% sure of the ID of the target and I can see my backstop clearly (and I have a LOT of room for error), I don't take the shot.

One of the reasons I don't hunt much anymore is that I have seen too many "irresponsible" hunters. I THOUGHT I had been shot once (rifle pointed RIGHT at me and it discharged before I could react) and then I watched as a "friend" fired several rounds into the top of a tree with the bullets heading just over a hill (where *I* knew that my grandmother lived :what: ) and no, he wasn't using a shotgun!

Sorry... unintentional rant off.

Logistar

[Atticus]

Awefull beyond words- as these tragedies always are.

As everyone has said- you never identify a target with a scope - you should know exactly what you're shooting and where your gonna shoot it.

Another pet peeve of mine:
I've been deer hunting with the same two guys for over ten years. This may be the last however. They can't seem to sit still or stick to a plan. If you hunt with a group, you need to have a plan, and that includes knowing where everyone is at all times. If you've got new hunters along, especially kids, that goes double.

If my kids decide they want to start hunting with me someday, they will be beside me, or I will know EXACTLY where they are, and they will know exactly where I am.

"This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin around"

[Greybeard]

Yep, quite tragic. But, also quite unfortunately, not all that unusual.

A student brought a copy (printed off CNN web site) of this incident with him to a hunter ed. class I had scheduled last night. He was somewhat surprised when I was not surprised to see it. I subsequently pulled out lesson plan notebook and proceeded to show him and other students several years worth of Texas Parks and Wildlife Accident Reports. In Texas alone, these "mistaken for game accidents" average at least 2 or 3 per year. Fortunately, not all are fatal. But tragic nonetheless. And preventable. :fire:

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/edu/hunted/pdf/huntacc02.pdf includes the recap of Texas' 2002 hunting accidents. The folk's in Austin are currently working on those for 2003. The dates, locations, etc. for 2003 will of course be somewhat different, but the two primary "categories" will be the same: poor judgement and/or careless gun handling. :(

And in some cases, people still whine about hunter education and/or blaze orange clothing being "mandatory" for public lands. :banghead:

[Byron Quick]

I lost a cousin to a hunting accident thirty years ago. His hunting partner wasn't satisfied with one shot on an unidentified target. He was shot three times.

I, too, identify movement with binoculars.