There is absolutely nothing wrong with hunting cold- but if it is safer, which has been contested by myself and many many others, it's by a meaningless margin and it ain't worth putting down your fellow hunters over. In my opinion.
-jeff
jeff -
I agree its not worth putting down fellow hunters over, but then again I hunt both ways depending on circumstances.
In particular I call your attention to the "intentionally fired" and "non-intentionally fired" numbers for the period from 1992 to 2006. Granted, I created these categories myself based on information provided for this time period in the report, but I think they are fairly accurate - certainly more than enough so for our purposes here.
We don't know if the "intentionally fired" accidents were situations in which the shooter carried hot ot cold. We can surmise, however, that the chamber was intentionally loaded prior to the shooting and that a cold chamber beforehand would have made no difference in the overall total. There were 163 such incidents for 55% of the total.
By contrast the "non-intentionally fired" incidents would have been dramatically lower if the shooter had a cold chamber at the time. In most cases a cold chamber would have prevented the incident altogether. There were 113 such incidents or about 38% of the total.
Within the "non-intentionally fired" category we have the "Improper Handling" subcategory with 24 incidents. Even if we assume all of these could have been avoided by carrying "hot", which is unlikely in the extreme, there are still 89 incidents or 30% that could have been avoided with an empty chamber.
There are also 24 "Other/Unknown" incidents during this time period for 8% of the total.
Here are the breakdowns of the shootings:
From 1992 through 2006 the firearms incidents look like this:
Code
Shooter Swinging on Game 38
Mistaken For Game 70
Victim Out of Sight of Shooter 41
Victim in Line of Fire 12
Ricochet 2
Total Intentionally fired incidents 163
Removing/Placing Firearm In/Out Vehicle 16
Unloading Firearm 6
Clubbing Game 1
Gun Fell From Insecure Rest 11
Improper Crossing of Fence/Obstacle 5
Mechanical Failure 4
Improper Handling 24
Riding With Loaded Firearm 5
Shooter Stumbled and Fell 16
Gun/Trigger Caught on an Object 17
Unknown Cause 6
Climbing/Descending Tree 2
Total non-intentionally fired incidents 113
Unknown Self-Inflicted 6
Unknown Two-Party 4
Other 7
Total Unknown/Other incidents 17
You can contest the idea that a cold chamber is safer than a hot chamber all you want, but the evidence weighs heavily against you.
Hunting with cold chambers could have avoided at least 89 (30%) of the total shooting incidents for the 1992 through 2006 period. Depending on the breakdown of the "Improper Handling" and "Unknown/Other" categories the avoidable incidents could be as high as 137 or 47% of the total.
I suggest that none of the injured people would consider such high percentages to be "meaningless".
Last edited by Coyote_Hunter; 02/28/08.
Coyote Hunter - NRA Patriot Life, NRA Whittington Center Life, GOA, DAD - and I VOTE!
No, I'm not a Ruger bigot - just an unabashed fan of their revolvers, M77's and #1's.
