Hunting Tragedy

[bp_cowboy]

The man in the story below is my wife's cousins husband. It is a real tragedy and wife is very distraught over it. She called me on my deer lease, where I was out hunting and told me the news and was tearfully telling me to be extra careful.

When I read the local paper, I always pay attention to the hunting accidents because I want to try and understand the situation to try and determine what happened so as not to put myself in that position. I feel that all of them turn out to the carelessness, and almost all of them can be avoided.

I won't go into the gory details of the story, but one question I have is.... Has anybody every had a gun go off by being dropped? I have heard of it happening, but never experienced it or had friends that have experienced it. I don't know if the rifle in question was a Traditional or In-Line ML, but to me the only plausible scenario would be if the safety was off or the hammer was fully cocked and the rifle was dropped and the jar of hitting the ground caused it to go off.

http://www.joplinglobe.com/story.php?story_id=143264&PHPSESSID=09529d215289049379fc1aec0e93c04d

 

[Atticus]

My condolences.

 

[Art Eatman]

No real info, so all we can do is speculate.

If the rifle was cocked, that long a fall could easily cause the trigger to move rearward and then you'd have a kaboom.

But let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

If the fall is some ten-ish feet, and the rifle was not cocked: Possibly--and not necessarily probably--the hammer could have been jarred rearward, but not enough to engage the half-cock notch. Then, it's possible that the hammer fell only that short travel but the cap did discharge. Same mechanics, possibly, for an in-line and the firing pin...

Purely speculation...

Art

 

[griz]

Sorry to hear that. My condolences.

Another possibility is the hammer could be down over the cap and slams into something on the way down.