This is wild. Is the land very flat? At least in my state, you’re required to complete a Hunter education course and pass a written, proctored exam starting at age 12. It was at least 75% safety.
We were taught to always know what we’re shooting at and what’s behind what we’re shooting at. You would lose your license if you shot a fawn, even if it were an accident, simply because saying it was an accident meant you clearly couldn’t see it. We were also taught how far a high-powered rifle round can travel. We wouldn’t even shoot up ridges.
If what you’re saying is true, then the only explanations I can think of is that either people shouldn’t be hunting there because of geography or these hunting rules and regulations around safety are garbage.
France seems to have a similar rate of hunting deaths to the USA.
> According to information released by the International Hunter Education Association, the U.S. and Canada combined see around 1,000 hunting accidents, specifically involving shooting injuries, on an annual basis. Moreover, close to 10% of these hunting accidents end in death.
> Since 2000, there have been 3,325 hunting accidents in France, of which 421 were fatal, figures from l'Office français de la biodiversité and la Fédération nationale de la chasse show.
> This is equivalent to 158 accidents per year, with 20 deaths.
France is just under 1/5 the population of USA and Canada combined. Perhaps it’s just that firearm deaths are so much more common in the USA (12.21/100k vs 2.33/100k) the hunting deaths are less notable
US may have 5x the population, but hunting is far more popular in the US - you have approximately 16M people in the US hunting per year, but only 1.3M in France. So it's more like 10x instead of 5x. On top of that, I suspect that in the US, hunters hunt more than hunters in France, so the total number of hunting hours might end up being 20x in the US vs France.
The US has roughly the same # of hunting deaths per year despite a much larger population. The US stats also include things like heart attacks and falling out of tree stands, dunno if French #s are comparable? If you look at injury rates per participant, hunting (5 injuries per 10,000 participants) is roughly on par with bowling (6 per 10k participants) and well behind golf (15) and tennis (16).
