The 2014 New York hunting season closed with the second lowest number of hunting-related shooting incidents on record, according to the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation. New York’s hunting incident rate (per 100,000 hunters) has fallen by more than 75 percent since the 1960s.
The past five-year average is down to 4.3 incidents per 100,000 hunters, compared to 19 per 100,000 in the ‘60s. A total of 22 hunting incidents occurred in 2014, including one unfortunate fatality that occurred while hunting small game. Eight of this year’s accidents were self-inflicted, 11 involved members of the same hunting party and only three occurred where the victim and shooter did not know each other. This was the first year on record without an incident occurring during the spring turkey season.
The lowest total number of hunting incidents in any year occurred in 2013, with just 19 incidents.