Hunter Safety Statistics

Raw data demonstrating how safe and responsible gun owners really are.

I was a Hunter Education instructor with the Department of Natural Resources of Wisconsin for a number of years during which they sent all certified instructors a compiled list of statistics. Being one of the top ten states for deer hunter participation, this makes an interesting and accurate case study. Let’s go over the lessons learned from the compiled numbers and see what we can discover about trends in gun safety.

Let’s start by looking at the safety rates of other popular sports. These stats are from the National Health Statistics Report (NHSR) which investigated 8.6 million sports- and recreation-related injuries that were reported by people aged 5 years and above. They reported injury rates per 1,000 participants. For a comparison to hunting, we need to look at rates per 100,000 participants.

National Health Statistics Report (NHSR) on 8.6 million sports injuries.

Organized shooting events, even those as rudimentary as basic hunter education, are marvelously effective at improving safety skills. In 1907, decades before hunter education was established, there were 97 reported firearm mishaps occurring during a hunt statewide of which 41 resulted in death. The total reported deer harvested that year was about 6,000.

Formal Hunter Education programs began in various parts of the United States around the mid-twentieth century. Back then, it was common for hunters to have about 14 firearm mishaps for every 100,000 taking the field. When Wisconsin enacted its formal program, it became a requirement for all hunters born in 1973 and later. In 1985, hunters had less than 11 firearm mishaps for every 100,000 taking the field.

In 2002, over five decades after the first hunter education programs were established, the number of incidents was less than half the number in 1907. In 2002, there were a total of 47 firearm mishaps statewide despite a much larger hunting population taking the field: 618,945 licenses sold with 277,959 deer harvested. 

According to the National Safety Council, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there was a nationwide average of seven firearm-related incidents for every 100,000 hunters in the United States. Wisconsin’s 2002 rate worked out to 7 for every 92,184 hunters; close to the national average back then.

This trend in improved hunter safety continued to improve over the years. By 2018 Wisconsin’s deer hunting injury rate dropped to 0.5 incidents for every 100,000 hunters with no fatalities. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on the results of Wisconsin’s gun deer season, declaring Wisconsin’s 2018 gun deer-hunting season to be the then-safest on record.

With three non-fatal shooting injuries, the 2018 Wisconsin gun deer season set a record for hunter safety, according to the Department of Natural Resources.

“We’re going to call it the state’s safest gun deer season ever,” said Jon King, DNR conservation warden and hunter safety coordinator.

The 2018 gun deer season ran Nov. 17 to 25. Although the agency has not released a final tally of gun deer license sales, it is expected about 570,000 hunters were authorized to participate.

Prior to this season, the DNR considered 2014, with four non-fatal shooting injuries, the safest.

There has been a long-term trend toward fewer shooting incidents in Wisconsin gun deer hunting seasons, especially since hunter safety education was made mandatory in 1985.

In step with these changes, the shooting accident rate in the gun deer season was 10.6 incidents per 100,000 participants in 1985, 4.8 in 1995 and about 0.5 in 2018.

Hunters registered 211,430 deer during Wisconsin gun deer season, up 7% from 2017.

This trend continued during Wisconsin’s 2019 gun Deer Season. Of the state’s 72 counties, 71 allow hunting. During the nine-day 2019 Deer Season (November 23 – December 1) 564,664 licensed hunters legally pursued big game with firearms. 160,569 deer were legally harvested.

During that 2019 nine-day hunt, there were a total of four reported shootings among all 71 counties. Three of these injuries were negligent discharges where the hunter injured himself, and one involved a hand injury where a hunter’s negligent discharge injured a member of his hunting party.

This puts the 2019 injury ratio at 1:141,166, or 0.708:100,000, or 0.0007%. 99.9993% of Wisconsin’s hunters in 71 counties took to the field and woods with loaded firearms in pursuit of deer for nine days without incident.

The National Safety Council had previously reported twenty years ago that deer hunting typically saw 7 injuries per 100,000 participants. Also according to the NSC’s statistics from that same period, hunting was slightly safer than table tennis (ping pong) and about twenty times safer than golf. In the twenty years since, the number is 0.7 injuries per 100,000 participants or less, making hunting ten times safer still.

#showgunsafety