OCR Text |
Show Tatch That Gun' Is Appeal As Accidents Climb The necessity to "watch that gun" was again cited today by department of fish and game officials as they made public a complete summary of 52 gun accidents which occurred in Utah during 1958. The report lists 35 accidents as occurring during hunting of game species, 8 during rabbit hunts and 9 accidents which occurred other than in the field. Nine of the 43 accidents which occurred while hunting game and nongame species resulted re-sulted in death to the victim, the remainder in varying degrees de-grees of injury. These totals it was noted, are the highest turned in, by the state in past years and can be attributed to careless gun handling coupled with increased in-creased hunting pressures. The report points up the need of the state for a hunter safety safe-ty training program which has already been put into effect on a' voluntary basis throughout most of Utah. The 1958 accident report compilation includes the following fol-lowing data pertaining to hunting hun-ting accidents: Of the wounds 16 were self-inflicted, self-inflicted, 27 were inflicted by others. Nineteen of the accidents acci-dents occurred while the parties par-ties involved were hunting upland up-land game birds, 12 during big game hunts, 8 while rabbit hunting and 2 during the waterfowl wa-terfowl season. Two accidents occurred during other hunting activities. Forty-two of the accident victims were males, one was a female. No women are listed as the shooter in any of the 43 hunting cases. Most frequent causes of the accidents list 9 cases where the victim was covered by the shooter swinging on game, 5 where the shooter stumbled and fell, 4 where the victim was out of sight of the shooter, shoot-er, 3 each where the trigger caught on brush and while the weapon was being placed in or removed from, a vehicle. Other accidents were caused by victim moving into the line of fire, victim out of sight of the shooter, loading weapons, crossing a fence with a loaded gun, and horseplay. One other . interesting fact disclosed by the report is that 39 of the hunting accidents occurred oc-curred at close ranges (50 yards or under). The nine gun accidents not attributed to hunting resulted in two fatalities. Four of the nine injuries were self-inflicted and all victimes were juveniles. Most frequent cause of non-hunting non-hunting accident was listed in the "horseplay" or "I didn't know the gun was loaded" category. Weapons involved in the 52 accidents listed 21 shotguns, 20 rifles, 10 hand guns and 1 bow and arrow. |