Posted on 10/27/2001 1:16:10 PM PDT by real saxophonist
Database reveals sport's safety
By Katy Human
Camera Staff Writer
The individual reports are tragic: A 22-year-old accidentally shoots and kills his father while hunting elk. Another man takes aim at a speck of white, which turns out to be the pom-pom on the hat of his hunting buddy. His friend dies.
The horror of such stories makes hunting seem much more dangerous than it really is, experts say.
"Hunting is safer than football," said Patt Dorsey, a hunter educator with the Colorado Division of Wildlife and the keeper of the division's database on hunting accidents.
It's even safer than skiing. In Colorado, 36 skiers and snowboarders died between 1996 and 1998, compared with 5 hunters, according to the state health department. Skiing is about five times more popular than hunting, but that still bodes well for hunters.
Yet this fall's hunting season, which began a few weeks ago, has claimed the life of one hunter: A father, shot by his son in Saguache County, while the two were hunting elk.
And this time of year, some people keep themselves and their kids off trails in public lands open to hunting.
But it's actually fairly safe to hunt and to hike or bike during hunting season, according to an analysis of the Division of Wildlife hunting accident database. Of nearly 900 accidents in the database, which ranges from 1949 to 2001, the vast majority involve hunters shooting themselves or their hunting buddies.
Dorsey maintains the database as a management tool for herself, as a hunter educator, and for hunting policy makers.
For every known hunting accident, the files report the date; the shooter's age, gender and hometown; weapons used; fatalities; environmental conditions; clothing worn; and a brief description of the incident.
An analysis of those records uncovered many trends, but few surprises: Hunting is getting safer; there were more accidents in the 1970s than in the 1990s. Most victims of hunting accidents were not wearing blaze orange. Many were killed or injured while handling firearms carelessly. Most victims were within 10 yards of their shooters. And hunters often shot themselves, usually in the toes, feet and hips.
The accidental shooting of passers-by is extremely rare. In at least 85 percent of reported cases, hunters shot themselves, members of their own party or nearby hunters.
Of the remaining cases, only six victims clearly were passers-by.
But the database is incomplete, Dorsey admitted. Records are submitted by Division of Wildlife field officers and police if an accident sent a victim to the hospital or the morgue.
Smaller incidents — resulting in a wound that could be bound and dressed in the field, without further medical attention — probably go unrecorded.
But the numbers have been useful for trend spotting, Dorsey said.
"For example, when we had a lot of vets coming home from World War II ... we had people jumping fences, getting shot left and right," Dorsey said. "The Army taught them not to unload their guns when crossing fences."
Hunter safety dictates the opposite, and today, Colorado hunters must unload their weapons before crossing obstacles.
Dorsey also realized that the state's youngest hunters — those 15 and under — were very safe in the field. "Prior to 1995, kids were required to be at least 14 before they were allowed to hunt big game," Dorsey said. "I went to the Legislature and said, 'Hey, why not lower the age? The young shooters are actually among the safest shooters there are.'"
Young hunters must be accompanied by adults.
"I'm kinda watching one (trend) right now," Dorsey said. "We have blaze orange requirements for big game hunters. But in Colorado, I couldn't tell you the last year we ever had a hunter shot because another hunter thought he was a deer."
But small game hunting, shooting birds, for example, is far more "instinctive," she said, and she has seen a number of recent accidents. Dorsey said she suspects that requiring small game hunters to wear blaze orange caps could help.
According to the database, 27 percent of hunting accidents in the 1990s involved bird hunters, for the last three decades, the figure was below 20 percent.
Hunters themselves believe their sport is very safe, but tarnished by a few bad apples.
"Idiots are going to hurt themselves, no matter what they do," said Bart Spedden, 25, of Superior.
Spedden also rock climbs, and has known several people who have been injured in that sport, but not in hunting. He has hunted since he was barely a teenager, and believes his careful selection of hunting partners has kept him safe.
Spedden moved to Colorado more than three years ago, but only started hunting in the state this season. "I hadn't met the right people before," he explained.
He took a hunting safety course when he was 13 — such courses are required for most Colorado hunters — and it influenced him strongly, he said.
"One of the things they go over is the ranges of the different firearms. It's pretty amazing," Spedden said.
"One of the smallest-caliber rifles out there is a .22. It has about the kick of a pellet gun. But, and I didn't know this before going through the course, it has a range of a mile and a half."
That means a bullet that misses a target could fly for a mile and half over open ground.
A combination of safety courses and field-experience with parents is the best way to become a safe hunter, says long-time Boulder resident Cliff Bosely, 35.
"I have two younger brothers and two younger sisters, and we all got hunter safety in the fifth or sixth grade," he said. "And I hunted with my father. I didn't get to carry a gun until I was 11 ... and my dad said the first year you carried a gun, you had to carry it empty."
His father used another trick to make safety serious.
"He shot a coffee can and then a piece of wood, and we went up to examine it. He said, 'Feel how hard this wood is, feel how hard this metal is.... now feel your skin.'"
Neither Bosely nor Spedden know hunters who drink excessively in the field, and the DOW's Dorsey said that's an extremely rare phenomenon in Colorado, despite stereotypes about hunters and beer.
In 869 records in the hunting accident database, there is only one mention of "possible use of intoxicants."
Trends in reported Colorado hunting accidents, 1970 to 1999:
Overall: During the last three decades, 504 hunting accidents were reported, 84 of which were fatalities. But hunting is getting safer: There were fewer accidents in the 1990s than the 1970s, and the proportion of those that were fatal also dropped.
Passersby: Hunting is somewhat dangerous for its participants, but accidental shootings involving hikers, bikers, horseback riders and other outdoor users are rare.
There have been six incidents reported in the last 30 years, but the stories are distressing: In 1967, two Colorado teen-agers on motorbikes were shot and killed instantly by a California hunter who mistook them for game. In 1991, a hunter shot at a horse, thinking it was game. The horse was killed but its rider survived.
Carelessness and horseplay: Last year, two boys in Westlake were horsing around with a BB gun and one shot the other in the eye — blinding him. Horseplay and general carelessness (resting a loaded gun on a foot, accidentally pulling a trigger while placing a gun in a holster) accounted for about 16 percent of all hunting accidents.
In 1991, a man near Grand Junction who rested his gun against a tree shot his hand when he tried to pick it back up by the muzzle.
Vehicles: Moving firearms into and out of vehicles is dangerous, as is illegally discharging a gun from a vehicle. Twelve people have died in Colorado during the last 30 years while using guns around cars and trucks or loading and unloading them. More than 70 were injured, and the stories are bad: In 1980, a 15-year old on a hunting trip in Grand County pulled a rifle from the car and it discharged, killing his father.
Types of weapons: There are many fewer bow hunters than gun hunters, so it's not surprising that bow hunters had fewer accidents than people using guns. Archers represented about 6 percent of hunters in 1996, the last year for which figures were easily available, and about 4 percent of all hunting accidents in the last three decades. Most hunting accidents involved rifles (47 percent), shotguns (27 percent) and handguns (23 percent).
Law: Most accidents do not involve violations of fish and game laws or other laws, but Dorsey speculates that her database does include a handful of murders. In 1995 a woman "accidentally" shot her husband while hunting on the Uncompahgre Plateau, for example. But an investigation revealed that Janice Hall, married to John Bruce Dodson, stood to gain nearly $500,000 from her husband's death, and the woman was convicted of murder earlier this year.
Coloradans and non-residents: Colorado hunters caused 82 percent of the hunting accidents recorded during the last 30 years, and the two largest groups of non-resident hunters, Californians and Texans, caused an additional 2 percent each. Resident hunters typically buy about 50 percent of the hunting licenses sold in a year.
Conditions: The hunting accident database doesn't show any apparent effect of cover, visibility, weather or topography on hunting accidents. Incidents happened equally frequently on hills and flat ground, in dense and light vegetation cover, and almost always on clear or calm days (presumably because that is when people choose to hunt).
Distance: For accidents in which investigators or victims knew the distance between the muzzle and the victim, 80 percent took place close up, within 10 yards. "This tells me guys are either shooting themselves, or they're shooting the friend they're hunting with," said Patt Dorsey, a hunter educator with the Colorado Division of Wildlife. One of a few exceptions: A man mistaken for a deer at dusk in Chaffee County, in 1968, who was shot by a hunter 200 yards away.
Contact Katy Human at (303) 473-1364 or humank@thedailycamera.com.
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