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Show Firearms Mishaps Claim 7 in '61 Thirty three firearm accidents during 1961, including seven fatalities, fa-talities, are shown in a release from the Utah Department of Fish and Game. Wounds sustained while hunt-inga hunt-inga counted for 22 of the accidents acci-dents and six of these were fatal. Twelve of these were self inflicted, in-flicted, ten by other hunters. Eleven of the accidents occurred oc-curred while hunting rabbits, eight during big game hunts and three during upland game bird seasons. Most frequent causes of these accidents were where the victim was out of sight of the shooter, moved into the line of fire, was mistaken for game, or was hit by the shooter swinging on game. Others were caused by the trigger being caught in brush, placing a weapon in or removing remov-ing it from an automobile, crossing cross-ing a fence with loaded gun, the hunter stumbling or failling, or just plain horseplay. Eleven accidents were not associated as-sociated with hunting, one being fatal. Most of these resulted from practice of the fast draw, horse play, the old lament, "I didn't know the gun was loaded," and other common forms of carelessness. careless-ness. The department placed significance signifi-cance on the fact that only one in four accidents was caused by juvenile hunters, where in pre- vious years the best record had been one in three. This was attributed at-tributed to the state's mandatory hunter safety training law for juveniles which has been in effect ef-fect the past three years. Eight persons involved in hunting hunt-ing accidents last year have lost their hunting license privileges for five years, after it was found the accident resulted from carelessness care-lessness or negligence. |