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Hello I am Keith McDonald, nick name Killer Keith and hunting my whole life, 45-50 years,
deer hunting, bear hunting, moose hunting, turkey hunting, you name it, I have hunted
it. I am a licensed Maine guide. I've hunted in Alaska. I've hunted in Canada. I've hunted
in Newfoundland. I've been everywhere, everywhere I've hunted. The biggest thing on safety that's
helped hunting in Maine as far as accidents probably is the color orange. I don't have
this figure, statistics. It used to be 2 or 3 people killed every year hunting in Maine
and 4 or 5 more wounded and nobody was wearing orange so since the orange has come into effect,
its cut way back. So that's increased the safety side of it. Another thing that might
help, I don't like hunting Southern Maine with a rifle. I don't like coming to Southern
Maine at all really other than with a bow and arrow. There are so many houses around
and it's built up so much, and these high powered rifles can carry quite a ways. So
I like hunting Northern Maine, big woods, whether or not I don't have to worry about
houses around or a lot of people around. I don't want to hunt in the car, I want to be
alone; I want to be up North Maine in woods where there are no houses, so chances of an
accident are pretty slim. Accidents probably happen most of all, maybe around a vehicle,
say 2-3 guys are hunting up there and they get out, it's time to go hunting, so they
get out of the car, you can't have a gun loaded in the car, so they get out of the car and
the first thing they are going to do is load the gun. You can get very relaxed about that.
So you load the gun and you are not careful about where it's pointed so it's all comes
back to pointing that gun, keeping that gun pointed in a safe direction. Generally you
got to put a clip in the gun or the shells in the gun and chamber around. Lot of times
the safety's on the gun are very easy to get pushed off. So you are not paying attention
if you load the gun through a clip and it, it's loaded, it's ready to go, somebody bumped
the safety off riding the vehicle, so the safety's off and your finger might be on the
trigger. I've seen it happen before, fingers on the trigger, safety is off, gun is loaded
and you are not being that cautious about where you're pointing it. So get in the habit
of checking the safety for sure, very often check the safety, make sure you haven't bumped
it off but keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot and always point
at a safe direction