| OCR Text |
Show Reports indicate need for gun safety schooling The need for Utah's comprehensive compre-hensive survival training and hunter safety, instruction for first time hunters was cited by department of fish and game officials in a release listing a summary of 70 gun accidents which occurred in the state during 1959. The report lists 24 accidents occurring during hunting of game species, 21 during rabbit hunts, 4 while hunting other nongame animals and 21 which did not occur while hunting. Five of the 49 accidents which occurred while hunting game an nongame species resulted re-sulted in death to the victim, the others in varying degrees of injury. These totals are among the highest turned in by the state in past years and are attributed attribut-ed largely to careless gun handling, han-dling, coupled with increased use of guns. The report points up the overwhelming need of the hunter hun-ter safety training program which was passed by the 1959 session of the legislature and which becomes effective April 1, 1960. Of the wounds sustained while hunting, 19 were self-inflicted, 30 were inflicted by others. Twenty-one of the accidents ac-cidents occurred while hunting rabbits, 15 during big game hunts, 7 while hunting upland game birds and 2 during the waterfowl season. Four accidents acci-dents occurred during other hunting activities. Most frequent causes of the accidents listed-9 cases where the victim was out of sight of the shooter, 5 where the victim vic-tim was covered by the shooter shoot-er swinging on game, and 3 each where the victim was mistaken mis-taken for game, where the trig- ger caught on brush, while loading and during horseplay. Other accidents were caused by victim moving into line of fire, placing a weapon in or removing it from an automobile, automo-bile, crossing a fence with a loaded gun and . the shooter stumbling or falling. In 23 of the hunting accidents acci-dents the shooter was under 19 years of age. The report also noted that 24 of the hunting hunt-ing accidents occurred at close ranges (50 yards or under). The 21 gun accidents not connected with hunting resulted result-ed in 6 fatalities. Fourteen of these 21 injuries were self-inflicted, and , unlike years previous, pre-vious, only 6 of the victims were juveniles. Most frequent cause of nonhunting accidents was listed in the "horseplay" or "I didn't know the gun was loaded" category. |
