COMMENTS BY KIM: Watch those wandering pellets
The Canada goose August management season opened today in three specific zones in the state. It marks the first of our fall hunting seasons in North Dakota and it also should serve as a reminder that shotgun safety should not be overlooked.
Many people believe limited range shotguns firing multiple pellets that disperse into broad patterns are safe in the field. That’s true to some extent, that being that rifles and handguns have dangerous striking power at much longer distances. But that difference doesn’t matter at all if proper gun safety isn’t practiced at all times. Ask anyone who has had a gun pointed at them.
The belief that shotgun pellets, from No. 7 1/2 and 8 size often used for hunting dove and quail and Hungarian partridge, to 4’s, 5’s and 6’s preferred by many in the pheasant season, don’t really pose a danger beyond 40-50 yards is just not true. There’s a number of reasons why.
Most people know the limits of their effective bird killing range with a shotgun – easy shot, long range, way out there etc. Distances are greater when using larger gauges and pellets and tighter chokes such as when hunting ducks or geese. There’s different kinds of shotshell loads too that are designed to increase a shotgun’s effective killing range. Loads, shotguns and weather conditions can vary greatly.
A lesson I learned as a very young goose hunter is one I’ve never forgotten. I had carefully maneuvered myself into position in light cover along a fenceline bordering a field where thousands of snow geese were feeding. Eventually the birds were flushed and were flying directly at me. When they were overhead I shouldered my shotgun, a 2 3/4 inch .20 gauge, and folded two of the birds.
As I watched the huge flock turn away the right lens in my eyeglasses shattered. I took off my glasses to examine them. A pellet falling from the sky, probably one from my own shotgun, had come back down and struck my glasses dead center in the middle of a lens. The safety glass spider-webbed but didn’t break into pieces.
If I didn’t have those glasses on, and I often didn’t because I just didn’t like wearing them, that falling pellet would have hit me in the center of my eye. Scary stuff. I’ve never forgotten it and since that day many years ago I have never hunted without eye protection. Today most people use eye protection, or should. That’s a good thing, maybe a sight-saving thing.
Many years later, while judging a dog trial in Montana, I had another incident that surprised me. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but it did.
The dog and handler I was judging had just completed a wonderful point and retrieve. I was writing the score down while on horseback when the handler motioned to me that the other dog in the field was on point. We were at least 80 yards away, maybe more. A strong wind was blowing directly at us.
The handler flushed the chukar and made a safe shot, meaning not toward us, and as the dog bolted for the retrieve the horse I was on, myself and the other handler were splattered by shotgun pellets. It felt like the sting of a dozen angry bees.
The horse reared up and I had all I could do to stay on and calm him down, something I wanted to do quickly because so I could check myself and the other handler for injury. Surprisingly, we were both fine and so was the horse. No blood. Just a good scare.
Thanks to a heavy canvas-type coat I was wearing the pellets didn’t penetrate. My leg on the exposed side of the horse was another issue. That’s where the stinging was most noticeable. Again though, no blood. No holes in my jeans.
The other judge and the handler who had fired the shot immediately came over to see how we were. The handler apologized for the incident which, under normal conditions, would have meant immediate disqualification from the trial.
However, I told the other judge that no disqualification was necessary because the firing of the shotgun was in a safe direction and that neither I nor the other handler considered ourselves anywhere near the “cone” of shot. We were also well beyond the range, or thought we were, of 7 1/2’s required for the trial.
All four of us were astounded by how far those small pellets had blown in the wind and the striking power they still had at such a distance. I had several red and very sore marks in my leg to prove it.
Later we learned a windshield had been shattered in a vehicle parked near the headquarters for the trial. Again, it was from a shot taken in what was thought to be a safe direction. The strong wind had blown the shot nearly 45 degrees off its original direction with enough power to break a windshield. Lesson learned.
At another trial I had a careless handler ignore my “safe” call, meaning do not pull the trigger on your shotgun. The handler clearly heard me, I could see that by his reaction, but then shot anyway. I had called “safe” because of the other handler in the field was close by and clearly in the field of fire. He went down on his knees immediately when the shot was fired.
I jumped off my 4-wheeler and ran over to him, knowing he had been shot. As I approached I could smell burning hair. The handler stood up and was elated to discover he was fine. So was I. He was extremely lucky. The hair on his arm had been burned from the muzzle blast of a .12 gauge shotgun. Somehow though, the pellets had missed him. Yes, the other handler was DQ’d from the trial. No argument from him either. It was a hard lesson learned, I hope.
My message is, don’t ever slack on gun safety. Don’t rely on a ballistics chart or patterning board to tell you what your shotgun pellets do once the trigger is pulled. That’s good knowledge, for sure, but sometimes there’s more to it than that. A lot more.
Fortunately, North Dakota’s Hunter Safety Education program has helped immensely with providing excellent instruction for today’s hunters. The state’s firearms safety record is pretty darn good. Let’s keep it that way. Have an enjoyable and safe hunting season.