Missing Teen Hunter Found Dead in Michigan From Apparent Accident

[HarveyBrooks]

I'll never understand how anybody can think it's appropriate to let a 14 year old kid play with a gun with no adult supervision. I don't care how much training or experience he had - he was still a child.


http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101015/NEWS16/101019721

[realisticphish]

1. In Ohio, that's illegal

"All youth hunting opportunities (except the youth waterfowl hunting season) are available to any hunter that possess a valid Youth Hunting License. All young hunters participating in youth hunts, regardless of age, must be accompanied by a non-hunting adult. A non-hunting adult is any person (a hunting license is not required) age 18 or older who accompanies the young hunter to and from the fi eld and is present with the young hunter while the young hunter is engaged in hunting. The non-hunting adult may not possess any hunting implements.

*Accompany: to go along with another person while staying within a distance from the person that enables uninterrupted, unaided visual and auditory communications"


looks like its the same way in MI:

"
All hunters under age 17 must be accompanied by a parent, guardian, or someone 18 or older designated by their parent or guardian.

A parent or legal guardian must accompany a youth under age 17. For all youth-only firearm deer seasons, an adult accompanying a youth firearm deer hunter cannot possess or carry a firearm, crossbow, or bow and arrow, except if the adult is a veteran with 100 percent disability, and the adult accompanying the youth does not need a deer hunting license, unless the youth is an apprentice hunter (see Apprentice Hunting License)."

But people are stupid. And now this poor kid paid for it.

[stray cat]

2. many kids die in car accidents as well

[frylock]

4. unsupervized 14 year old kids?

[MichaelHarris]

5. Yeah

way too many kids playing with cars.

[realisticphish]

6. I don't hunt, but I'm a lifelong shooter

I've been shooting since the age of 6. That doesn't excuse violating the law that's put in place to protect minors who hunt.

[doc03]

8. I think I got a BB gun when I was like 6 and a double

barrel shotgun at maybe 12.

[realisticphish]

11. look one post up

I've been shooting since 6 as well.

And my Dad was there with me every time I pulled the trigger, until I left high school.

eh, maybe edit that with BB guns and airsoft. I was shooting cans by myself occasionally. But never actual firearms

[one-eyed fat man]

15. I grew up in Ohio

When I was a kid you could hunt at age 11. But back in the Fifties either we were more responsible as kids or our parents had higher expectations. After our chores were done, we often went hunting, by ourselves! In the summer we would thin out the groundhogs in the pastures. In the fall, Mom welcomed a big cottontail or a nice fat ruffed grouse for the supper table. Venison was part of winter fare.

When I grew up, if your parents couldn't trust you with a pocket knife by age 8, a .22 rifle by age 10, and your own shotgun by age 12, you were pretty much a failure in the eyes of adults as well as your peers. This poem which was written in 1909, but I heard the same advice from my father. I would not have borne the shame to have another tell him I had been unsafe afield.

A FATHER'S ADVICE

If a sportsman true you'd be, listen carefully to me.

Never, never let your gun pointed be at any one
That it may unloaded be, matters not the least to me.
When a hedge or fence you cross, though of time it cause a loss
From your gun the cartridge take, for the greater safety sake.
If 'twixt you and neighbouring gun, bird may fly or beast may run,
Let this maxim e'er be thine, "Follow not across the line."

Stops and beaters, oft unseen, lurk behind some leafy screen
Calm and steady always be, "Never shoot where you can't see."
Keep your place and silent be; Game can hear and game can see.
Don't be greedy, better spared is a pheasant, than one shared.
You may kill, or you may miss, but at all times think of this:
"All the pheasants ever bred won't repay for one man's dead."

[X_Digger]

16. I was hunting by age 12..

These were the two foxes my great-grandfather and I shot simultaneously. (The cut under my eye was from crowding the scope.)

[Uben]

3. Fourteen might be a child in your book......

....but for those of us who grew up rurally, getting a hunting rifle was something that most boys got by age 14. Accidents happen to adults, too. The article states ......."The sheriff said young Fletcher was an experienced hunter who had followed safety protocol by telling his family the area in which he would be hunting."

I had a friend die about the same way. He was stepping thru a barbed wire fence and had leaned his shotgun against a fencepost. When he stepped thru, the gun dislodged and discharged, shooting him in the stomach. He was only a hundred yards from the house when the accident occurred. He was 34.

I know there are kids who are 14 who should not be anywhere near a gun due to their carelessness, immaturity, mental capacity or what-not, but most boys 14 yrs or older are responsible enough to handle gun ownership. I got one when I was ten, a .22 rifle.
Parents are the best judge of that.

[proteus_lives]

7. My siblings and I were handling rifles at 10-12.

No deaths or mishaps.

Accidents happen. In everything. He played football too, he could have gotten his neck snapped there.

[mrcheerful]

9. Not to mention that back when I was in my 20's a neighbor took his 14 year old son out bow hunting

they got separated in the brush kid saw a deer shot an arrow at it and killed dad when the arrow missed the deer and hit dad in the heart. Accidents happen no matter how much safety equipment is involved, unlike gun hunting bow hunting doesn't require red or orange suits so both were wearing camos. I have heard many stories in my 53 years of living in Michigan where human error ended in death, like the 40 yo that climbed over a fence went to retrieve the shot gun from where he leaned it on said fence and the trigger got hung up so when he jerked it free the gun discharged in his face, hind sight is 20/20.

[msongs]

10. there is no such thing as an 'accident' - everything has a cause nt

[benEzra]

13. "Accident" speaks to lack of *intent*, not lack of negligence.

Nearly all gun accidents involve violations of the four rules of gun safety, generally more than one simultaneously:

(1) Always treat any gun as if it is loaded.
(2) Never point a gun in an unsafe direction.
(3) Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target and you are ready to shoot.
(4) Always be sure of your target and what is beyond it.

While rare, hunting accidents do occur, and usually involve either simultaneous violations of (2) and (3), or (4).

[ileus]

12. He wasn't "playing" with a gun.

He was hunting....at 14 I'd been deer hunting with a marlin336 35 remington for 2 years, before that a single shot 410 for two years alone.

We don't even know any of the details. Was he crossing a fence? Did he trip and fall? Did he drop it out of a stand? One thing is for sure the muzzle was pointed in the wrong direction. Why?

[SteveM]

14. By 14, I had a .12 ga. shotgun, and a .22 taget revolver (the latter in my room)...

The shotgun was kept in the gun cabinet with all the family's hunting irons. We kids kept the .22s for back-up self-protection. We were trained, and had hunted frequently by the time the age of 14 was reached.

As sad as this death is, it is the stand-out exception to the rule: Childhood deaths by gun "accidents" have been going down steadily for many years, now.