Armed and ready

Last October, a Missouri woman, her brother and a friend were hunting coyotes along the edge of a wooded lot overlooking a field.

They were dressed in total camouflage, including hats and masks, and had staked certain positions surrounding the field.

The sun was dropping below the horizon, and the coyotes were beginning to roam a brushy area nearby.

The woman saw a figure crawling in the thicket , fired a fatal shot into her target.

Her target, however, wasn't a coyote.

It was her brother.

He had moved from his original position and had crawled forward.

That accident was one of 30 hunting mishaps and three deaths listed in a Missouri Department of Conservation 2006 file of unnamed hunting victims. All three fatally wounded victims were shot by a relative.

Such accidents are the reason the state requires all hunters to take a hunting safety course, the reason about 30 future hunters, ages 11 and up, gathered recently for a three-night course at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Campus Nature Center auditorium.

And they're the reason Cape Girardeau County conservation agent Daren Pettit asked for a volunteer to help demonstrate the "two-handed carry," a specific way of holding a rifle.

Twelve-year-old Lindsay Neal of Cape Girardeau raised her hand. Pettit pointed at her and Neal jumped up on the auditorium stage at the Missouri Department of Conservation's Nature Center.

Pettit handed the rifle to an eager Neal, who stood a little taller than the rifle itself. Neal put both of her hands on the rifle, one hand near the stock and one hand on the forestock.

More importantly, Neal, a student at Cape Girardeau's Central Middle School, held the rifle so the muzzle, or end of the gun's barrel, was pointed towards the ceiling.

"It's always important to have your muzzle pointed in a safe direction," Pettit told the crowd. "Once you shoot a gun, you can't take back that bullet."

Pettit explained hunting accidents are caused in four ways: Hunter misjudgments, safety violations, lack of control and mechanical failure were the four main causes of hunting accidents.

Last year, 21 of the 30 hunting accidents were due to hunter judgment mistakes in which a victim was mistaken for game or the victim was out of sight of the shooter.

The conservation department says the courses have been working.

In 1988, the Missouri Conservation Commission required anyone born after Jan. 1, 1967 to take a 10-hour hunting education course and a 30-question test before they could purchase a hunting permit.

After the state made the course mandatory, the number of hunting accidents steadily decreased, said Bryan Bethal, a hunting education coordinator. In 1987, there were 87 hunting accidents, 12 of them fatal. That's more than twice as many accidents and four times as many deaths than 2005.

As Pettit continued the program, he talked about "the zone of fire" which is critical for multiple hunters to determine before they split off into their blinds or stands. It's the hunting lesson Vice President Dick Cheney neglected when he shot his friend in the face.

It's also a rule that would have saved the Missouri woman's brother. The brother shouldn't have moved into the zone of fire; and the woman shouldn't have shot at an unidentified target.

Sisters Crockette and Heather Leible had heard much of this information before. Seventeen-year-old Crockette, a junior at Central High School in Cape Girardeau, and 15-year-old Heather have been going hunting with their father, Mike Leible, since they were 10 years old.

"We look up to our father. He's always taught us to be safe with a gun," said Heather, who attends Cape Girardeau Central High School. "This course is just reinforcing what we already know."

On the final day of the three-day long course, after they had taken the mandatory 30-question hunter's education test, Crockette and Ashley Leible patiently sat on the floor in the Nature Center's lobby. Both girls were anxious. They both hoped for passing grades because their father promised to take them dove hunting in September.

"It's the whole experience of hunting that I like," Crockette said. "Getting up in your tent in the morning and hearing the leaves rustle. I love it."

When Pettit brought the group of students back into the auditorium to announce who passed the class, both Crockette and Heather Leible's names were called. Both girls smiled as they accepted their official hunter's education patches -- they are now legal hunters.

jfreeze@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 246

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Gathering of hunting accident stats

The International Hunter Education Association, a not-for-profit organization, collects hunting accident statistics in the United States.

A few states do not report statistics to IHEA -- the IHEA has no legal authority to require states to report hunting accidents.

In 2002, the last year when a majority of the states reported hunting accident date to IHEA, there were approximately 740 hunting accidents involving a shotgun, rifle and handgun. The state with the most hunting accident -- 69 -- was Pennsylvania. Missouri ranked 7th out of 41 states, having 33 hunting accidents in 2002.

Among those state conservation agencies who do submit data, it may take several years while waiting for all court cases to clear before submitting data.

Mike Lancaster, a district supervisor for the Missouri Department of Conservation, has investigated hunting accidents for many years.

Sometimes reported hunting accidents were found to have been murders, he said. Much like a crime scene investigator, Lancaster said there are a variety of things to investigate, including interviewing the shooter and if possible, the victim.

"We'll look for evidence, like the bullet," he said. "We can pretty well place the victim and the shooter, and we'll match that up with their stories. If things don't match up, we turn the investigation over to the highway patrol."

Lancaster said the majority of hunting accidents occur in the northern region of Missouri -- due to the number of hunters in that area.

-- Jennifer Freeze