Foundation: Safety numbers favor hunting

If you want your daughter to be safe, tell her to pack away that cheerleading uniform and get herself into the woods.

That might sound crazy. But the truth is, hunting is safer than cheerleading, and a host of other activities.

According to data compiled by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association representing the hunting and shooting industry, a comparison of 28 activities found that hunting is safer than such things as volleyball, snowboarding, cheerleading, bicycle riding, soccer, skateboarding and tackle football. Overall, hunting was the third-safest of the 28 activities measured.

According to the statistics, hunting with firearms has an injury rate of 0.05 percent, which equates to about one injury per 2,000 participants. Only camping, with an injury rate of .01 percent, and billiards, with an accident rate of .02 percent, were safer.

By comparison, golf has an injury rate of 0.16 percent. Football — which had the highest number of accidents per participant — posted a rate of 5.27.

"Many people have the misconception that hunting is unsafe, but the data tells a different story," said Jim Curcuruto, the Foundation's director of industry research and analysis. "Comprehensive hunter-education classes that emphasize the basic rules of firearm safety and a culture of hunters helping fellow hunters practice safe firearms handling in the field are responsible for this good record."

Pennsylvania Game Commission statistics support that view.

The commission has been tracking accidents — now called "hunting-related shooting incidents" — since 1915. In those early years, Pennsylvania had about 55 accidents per 100,000 hunters. Things remained that way throughout the 1960s.

Today, though, there are fewer than five accidents per 100,000 hunters. The commission credits that to mandatory hunter safety education, which began in 1959.

Accidents have declined by 80 percent since then, according to the commission's data.

"The marked decline of hunting-related shooting incidents can be attributed to the success of hunter-education training and the use of fluorescent orange clothing," reads a commission report.

Data from 2008, the most recent year available, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also supports the view that firearms are generally safe. Its records show that firearms are involved in just one half of 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in the United States, including those in the home.

Nationally, an estimated 16.3 million hunters went afield last year. About 8,122 sustained injuries, or 50 per 100,000 participants, according to the Foundation report. The vast majority of hunting accidents — more than 6,600 — were tree stand-related.

Safety figures

How do some other activities compare to hunting when it comes to safety• To put things into perspective, compared to hunting a person is:

» 11 times more likely to be injured playing volleyball

» 19 times more likely to be injured snowboarding

» 25 times more likely to be injured cheerleading or bicycle riding

» 34 times more likely to be injured playing soccer or skateboarding

» 105 more times likely to be injured playing tackle football

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