NY Hunting-Related Shooting Incidents Lowest on Record

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has announced that the 2013 hunting season had the lowest number of hunting-related shooting incidents on record.

A total of nineteen hunting accidents occurred in 2013, including two fatalities. One fatality was in Washington County, when a man accidentally shot himself in the chest after slipping on ice. He was attempting to shoot an opossum at his bird feeder. The other fatality was in Otsego County, when a Long Island man thought he was shooting at a deer, but actually shot his friend in the chest.

Fourteen of this year's accidents where self-inflicted. Several of these incidents were in Delaware County, and include a teenager who accidentally shot off his thumb, a hunter who shot himself in the leg with an arrow, and another who got shot in the leg while climbing down from a deer stand.

New York's hunting incident rate (incidents per 100,000 hunters) has fallen by more than 70% since the 1960s. The past five-year average is down to 4.3 incidents per 100,000 hunters, compared to 19 per 100,000 in the 1960s.

For more information, including the 2013 Hunting Safety Statistics, visit the Sportsman Education Program on DEC's web page.