Oklahoma News 4 puts a rather blatant slant on a Thanksgiving Day hunting accident in a story they titled ‘Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Warns Against Hunting with Assault Rifles.’ Granted it would have helped if the DNR/DoW guy they interviewed hadn’t also thrown around the phrase “assault rifle” like it was pepper on mashed potatoes.
Ignoring the ginned-up frenzy about the “assault rifle”, there’s this: an 18-year-old hunter named…Hunter…was up in a tree stand without a safety harness and somehow shot himself not once, but twice. One round to the abdomen, another one to the thigh. (Twice? Really?)
Hunter Scales was sitting in a deer stand in Southern Oklahoma last weekend when his semi automatic rifle went off twice, hitting him in the stomach and thigh.
He’d forgotten to make sure the gun was on safety.
Hunter’s family says he fell nearly 25 feet from the stand. Thankfully, his brother was nearby and called 911.
He’s still recovering tonight in a Tulsa hospital. (Kaylee Douglas, Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Urges Caution When Using AR-15 to Hunt)
The rifle just “went off.” Twice. After it pointed itself a the hapless hunter, Hunter.
Sigh.
A word of advice from one hunter to all you other hunters. If you’re in a tree stand, please use your safety harness. Wherever you are, use your gun’s safety. And no, the trigger is not there to screw around with while you’re waiting on a deer (you’d be surprised how often I’ve heard “I’m not gonna pull it, I just like to mess with it while I sit there”).
Four golden gun rules, guys. Know them. Love them. Follow them. And for the less-than-capable hunters out there, for the love of all that is holy, stop making the rest of us look like idiots.
