Iowa teen dies after being mistaken for squirrel during hunting trip, officials say
Iowa teen dies after being mistaken for squirrel during hunting trip, officials say
Listen, I've been on Squirrel hunts. You use a dog to chase them up a tree, then shoot them down with a .22.
At no time should you be aiming at anything person level.
Why would you hunt squirrels?
We eat them.
There are parts of the world where squirrels are invasive species. For example Grey Squirrels are invasive to the UK if I recall?
Edit, I just looked it up to fact check myself and yeah Eastern Grey Squirrels are invasive to the UK and parts of Europe and are a threat to native red Squirrels and the like. Ironically, they were introduced to the areas they're now invasive in because people liked their aesthetics and wanted to hunt them. People are absolute idiots.
The skeptic in me says it was an execution.
A bunch of "friends" go out shooting and they pop him in the head?
I wouldn't necessarily say that. A lot of people are just careless with guns.
I would expect a manslaughter charge at most.
Murdered
And then they came for furries
dies
Interesting word choice.
Yeah it was the craziest thing! Someone shouted, “Hey look, a squirrel” and the poor kid just keeled over.
Strangely appropriate
When I took my state's required hunter safety course, one of the instructors was an older dude with grey hair and a ponytail who wouldn't look out of place at a Dead & Company concert.
To point out the importance of wearing an orange hat during small game seasons, and also to "be sure of your target and what lies beyond it" he pointed out how much that grey hair and ponytail would look a lot like a squirrel if you only caught a glimpse of it through some brush.
Not saying that's exactly what happened here, the kid doesn't look like he was the grey ponytail type, but the article shook loose that memory in my head.
EDIT: not that I'm ungrateful, but somehow this is now my highest rated comment on Lemmy, and I'm just curious why this one in particular resonated to well.
this one in particular resonated to well.
Common sense is hard to come by.
Fair, I hadn't thought of that but it makes sense. My first thought was that it was a very blatant murder cover up. But ive apparently fallen too deep into fiction if that's what cane to mind first.
I'm not really into that sort of fiction, but it's not that weird a thought to have.
You hang around conspiracy theorists much? Maybe too many crime shows on TV? I mean I thought I was cynical, but to have that be the first thing that occurs to you (and it sounds like you were pretty damned sure of it, too) blows me away.
I saw the poor kid’s hair in the thumbnail and was like “oh no.”
There are a LOT of brown squirrels in the Midwest.
I’d make sure to cut my hair AND wear a hat if I was going squirrel hunting and had hair like that.
what do ya know, more irresponsible gun owners. If only something could be done to prevent idiots from getting guns, this whole country would be much better off.
Suggestion: instead of only preventing idiots from getting their hands in guns, why not prevent idiots? You know, with quality, accessible public education.
Why not both?
Why the F do kids shoot squirrels? And who the F confuses a squirrel that fits in a shoe box with room to spare with a human of near-adult size?
The real question is why the fuck anyone would go hunting for squirrels with a large enough caliber weapon that it could kill a person.
You can drop a squirrel with a pellet air rifle im sure. Anything larger than that and youre not hunting a squirrel, youre just blowing it away.
Hunting squirrels is stupid enough on its own without doing it solely for the sake of shooting something thats alive. Thats not conservation, its blood sport
Squirrels are very frequently hunted with a .22. It works great for squirrels, but (like a pellet rifle) can be lethal to a human - especially if you shoot them in the head.
And there's legitimate reasons to shoot squirrels. I used to do it for an exotic animal preserve because their population would explode and they'd eat everything in site.
Squirrel is commonly hunted with a .22 rifle. It's a very small bullet that could easily kill a person, especially with a round to the back of the head.
As a side-note, you can get air-powered pellet-rifles powerful enough to take down a deer.
It worked for Dick.
Sadly there's a certain adorable resemblance
(Apologies in advance for a morbid joke.)
Presumably, he was even carrying some nuts...
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Nonsense
He died because someone didn't identify their target and exercise muzzle control.