Hunting among absolute safest of activities
November 10, 2002
Hunting among absolute safest of activities
One of the safest of outdoors pursuits is about to get under way in these
parts Friday – the firearms deer hunting seasons.
No, Pollick has not slipped a cog. It is true.
Although some 700,000 armed men and women will be afield in Michigan Nov.
15 through 30, chasing dreams of big bucks, they will be comparatively
safe – because they are safe.
Another 500,000 or so Ohioans and nearly a million Pennsylvanians
similarly will be afield come Dec. 2, with similar safe prospects in the
offing. Don?t believe? Consider:
The National Safety Council, in its injury facts report, listed 700
accidental firearms-related deaths overall -not just hunting-related – in
the entire country in 1999. Though obviously even one is too many, that
is the lowest total for shooting accidents since 1903.
The Council also noted that those fatalities have fallen by 50 per cent
since 1989.
Thus, firearms accidents during hunting make news not because they are so
common but because they are so rare.
For comparison, in 1999 the country tallied 41,300 motor-vehicle
fatalities, 17,100 deaths from falls, 4,000 deaths from drowning, 3,100
deaths from fires or burns, and 3,200 deaths from ingestion of food or
other objects.
On the nonfatal injury front, hunting resulted in fewer than eight
hospital visits per 100,000 hunters, and most of those visits were
related to sprains, falls, cuts, and the like, not accidental shootings.
Recreational football, on the other hand, required 2,200 visits per
100,000 participants, baseball 2,000, tennis 119, golf 104, and swimming
93.
In 1998, nationally there were 52 people killed by lightning, 85 by
recreational underwater diving, 87 by hunting, and 1,500 by swimming.
None of which gives any hunter, or firearms bearer, a license to be
careless.
But the point is made: hunters by and large are careful. And give credit
to modern, mandatory hunter-education and safety courses, and
requirements to wear blaze or hunter orange outerwear.
It is a myth that the supposedly woodswise old-timers, in their
traditional red-and-black-checked woolens, were all that careful.
In Michigan in 1940, there were 35 deaths and 77 injuries among just some
718,000 licensees. In 2000, with more than 1.5 million licensees, there
were just seven fatalities and 32 injuries.
In the intervening 60 years, the statistics ebbed and flowed somewhat.
But especially in the last 20 years – the hunter-education and blaze
orange era – the accident trend is significantly down. State after state
shows similar safe trends.
In neighboring Pennsylvania, 2001 was the safest hunting season in the 87
years of record-keeping. The state listed 62 hunting-related shootings,
including two fatalities. Moreover, the accident rate was the lowest on
record, six per 100,000.
In Ohio in 2001, only one of every 15,625 hunters was injured in a
hunting accident. There were 32 accidents, including four fatalities,
among up to 500,000 hunters afield in the gun-deer season.
Various state authorities agree that the most common among shooting
accidents are those of a hunter mistaking another hunter for game, and
swinging and shooting without watching for others in the field of fire.
Failure to properly identify the target-game was the second-leading cause
of shootings.
Self-inflicted accidental shootings came next. All such mishaps are
imminently preventable, however rare.
Which gets to the bottom-line message for hunters headed afield in the
next two to four weeks: The only real safety is you, and you cannot call
back a round fired.
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In Michigan?s upcoming rifle season, hunters are expected to take some
325,000 deer, of which 175,000 are expected to be bucks.
Another 121,000 deer are expected to be taken in the archery seasons, and
28,000 in the muzzleloader season. Adding in youth and other smaller,
special seasons, the all-seasons bag is forecast at 506,000 deer, this
from a herd estimated at 1.8 million. The 2001 all-seasons kill was some
463,000.
The firearms season is expected to tally some 4.8 million hunter-days
afield during the rifle season, almost half of the 10 million hunter-days
expected for all seasons. Deer hunting in Michigan, furthermore, means
$500 million spent on food, lodging, transportation and equipment.
The state herd is about the same size as in recent years, but still above
target goals, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources said.
A mild-to-moderate winter in the upper peninsula meant minimal losses and
good fawn production in the U.P. So the buck kill is expected to be near
normal.
The northern lower peninsula herd is about the same size or slightly
smaller than 2001, and the kill is expected to be about the same or
slightly higher. The herd, however, remains over targets.
The southern lower peninsula herd appears to be stabilizing in some areas
after intentional population reductions in recent years. But numbers
still are above desired levels in some areas.
Hunters are reminded that the DNR is providing plastic kill-tag backers
this year, to help aid in efficient collection of harvest information.
The plastic-backed tags should be attached flat, so that completed tags
may be easily read, including the bar codes.
