8i4 
Aceidental Shooting in the ^Woods 
Hon.. J. F. Sprague, of Monson, Maine, read the 
following paper before the. North American Fish and 
Game Protective Association at its recent annual meet- 
ing, at Portland, Maine: 
The accidental shooting of men by hunters for big 
game,-not only in the Maine, woods, but in other forest 
sections of the country where game is pursued is de- 
plorable alike to sportsmen and all good citizens. Its 
frequent occurrence is lamentable, and if there is any 
remedy within the domain of law or otherwise, it 
should be discovered and applied. The subject is grew- 
some and each case has been a painful one, yet all of 
us have been interested in it and studied it for the 
finding of the cause. The circumstances surrounding 
each case have varied, yet it would seem that in about 
every instance the party committing the offense has 
been in more or less of an abnormal mental condition 
occasioned by unnatural excitement. 
Sometimes the victim himself has unwittingly been 
at fault in placing himself in a dangerous position, con- 
trary to the arranged plans of the hunting party. My 
observation and information lead me to the conclusion 
that generally these accidents have been by novices. Old 
huntersj woodsmen, guides, and sportsmen of mature 
experience and long training in forest life have seldom 
made these disastrous mistakes. , . 
Many have contended that those who. have , been in- 
strumental in formulating and enacting the laws for the 
protection of the game have been derehct in this re- 
spect, and that more drastic measures should be passed 
—statutes that would impose severe penalties for shoot- 
ing human beings by persons in pursuit of game and 
game birds. Along this line the Legislature of Maine 
in 1901 passed the following act: "Section I. Who- 
ever while on a hunting trip or in the pursuit of wild 
game or game birds, negligently or carelessly shoots 
or wounds or kills any human being, shall be punished 
by imprisonment not exceeding ten years, or by hne 
not exceeding one thousand dollars. Section 2. it 
shall be the duty of the County Attorney and bhentf 
in the County in which a violation of the foregoing sec- 
tion occurs, to forthwith investigate and prosecute every 
person who therein violates the provisions of this act, 
and for failing to investigate and prosecute, each of 
said officers shall be liable to a fine of not exceeding 
one thousand dollars and to be removed from office. 
I am not aware that- any marked. change for the better 
has been the result of this law. It is a principle of the 
Common Law, that the killing of a human being 
through negligence, is manslaughter, and the penalty 
for it in this State has always been the same as pro- 
vided by this act. Section 2 of this act mad? it m- 
cumb^nt upon the County. Attorneys and Sherifts to 
institute immediate - investigations whenever such an 
accident occurred, which they have done so far as I 
am informed, and yet I do not know that a t^ue biU 
has been found against any one by any Grand Jury m 
the State under this ^ act.. The .killing to constitute 
manslaughter must be unlawful and malicio.us, but the 
malice may be presumed, if, as the Court says in State 
vs Knight, "there is nothing in the circumstai^ces, as 
proved to explain, quality or palliate the act.' _ Then 
"the law presumes it to have been done maliciously. 
Without considering, while passing, the complicated 
questions which might arise as to what would constitute 
negligence, it will be readily perceived that a prose- 
cution of this' kind would be beset With grave difficul- 
ties. It is doubtful if it is possible for any one to formulate 
a "'law "aimed ' directly against accidental shooting that 
will reach to the root of the evil. . ' 
It is not within the ' r&irige of possibihty to punish a 
man for the purely accidental killing of a human being. 
If a legislature should, in a frenzy, pass such a law, it 
is not likely that it would stand in the Courts or ever 
be enforced by any Anglo-Saxon community. Then if 
there is no help for it within the ken of the law, is there 
any practical way for hunters and sportsmen them- 
selves to substantially work out a solvent? I dare not 
be positive about any position regarding so intricate a 
subject, and yet this question may possibly be an- 
swered affirmatively. . Philosophers, sages and scientists 
have from the beginning of the- race searched for light 
within the realm of the mind, but have been rewarded 
with only the most meagre knowledge. We only know 
that the human mind is a complicated and mysterious 
piece of mechanisnii constantly being insensibly in- 
lluenced by occult forces, only some of which are dis- 
cernible. Now we have for a long time had .ia. Maine 
a heavy penalty for killing the cow moose. The moose 
hunter goes into the wods in quest of moose, knowing 
that he must stop and determine, before he fires, 
whether it is a bull, a cow, a spike horn, or a calf, and 
he pauses long enough to ascertain, and seldom mis- 
takes a moose for a man. Why is this? I cannot satis- 
factorily answer the question, neither can you. ■ We 
know only the fact. His mental processes must have 
unconsciously led' him into a deliberateness in pursuing 
the moose, which he is a stranger to when hunting the 
'Been "The normal man when he enters upon a chase 
for either deer or moose is possessed of no idea what- 
ever that he may kill a fellow being. Such a calamity 
is not consciously or unconsciously any part of the 
workings of his mind. The excitement of the chase 
is intense with him, especially if he is a beginner in the 
sport. 
This undue and abnormal excitement subjects him to 
distorted visions, mental and perhaps optical illusions. 
In his unnatural vision he sees something. The bushes 
move, the color of the animal is there, the plan was 
for his comrade and guide to be on yonder mountain 
side, far from this spot, and no latent mental forces 
suggest the possibility of a man being near. He has 
not that unconscious and mysterious incentive to be 
deliberate, which he might have were he looking for a 
moose. In his mental vision he sees a deer. It is real 
to him, as actual as are the objects in the delirium ei 
a sick brain, yet it is only an illusion. He hrcs ar.-d 
alas! Tli^^ c;ne awful thing which he was so positive 
the other day that he could easily and certainly -ivoid, 
when he was indifferently reading of the last accidental 
shooting, is done. The fatal shot has ruined a home, 
desolated a fireside, made a widow, made orphan,^;, and 
eiubittcred and saddened his whole life, and filled 
his ov/n heart with tears of bitter and eterml remorse. 
If he had been hunting a moose he would not have 
stopped and looked before firing because he appre- 
hended that he might see a man. That fragment of 
thought would be absent from his mind in either event. 
But yet, although not thinking of a man when hunting 
the moose, he was sane and thoughtful, because there 
was something, a grain of thought v/hich passeth our 
understanding, marvellously lodged somewhere in the 
recesses of his mind that he might mistake a cow for 
a bull. While hunting for the deer he had no such 
mental promptings, for the law has allowed him to 
kill both doe and buck. There had been no inex- 
plicable mental process unconsciously at work to cause 
him to ponder with care before firing, and the danger 
of his killing a man had never operated upon his mind. 
He had always believed that only the careless killed 
men in the woods accidentally, and the belief that he 
never had been and never could be careless at such 
tims was a part of his being. The popular theory is 
that these accidents a,re invariably the result of gross 
carelessness, and this belief is so universal that, being 
false, it may of itself be the great cause of them. When 
hunting for the deer he is equally as certain that he 
cannot by any chance be careless enough to kill a man, 
and haying had no brakes put on to his senses regard- 
ing the deer, he loses his mental equilibrium at the 
critical moment and the tragedy is athwart his life. 
The old vifeather-beaten hunter will tell you of the 
"buck fever." He cannot explain it. You laugh at it. 
A scientist could not make a lucid diagnosis of the 
disease, and yet it is a part of the actual knowledge of 
this child of nature. 
My conclusions are that you cannot enact a law 
bearing directly upon the trouble that will, meet .the 
requirements. Any attempt to improve upon the princi- 
ples of the common law by legislative enactment would 
be futile. They are the fruition of the wisdom and ex- 
perience of centuries. No more can you regulate a 
man's nerves or control the unknowable operations of 
his mind, by statute. 
In that direction then. many we look with any degree of 
hope for a remedy? I am loth to suggest. My reason- 
ing along this line has not led me into such a clear light 
of conviction as I have aspired to. The sportsman 
of high ideals, the true. lover of the woods, the worship- 
per and devotee in "God's first temples" have long been 
heart sick at this sad feature of pleasure and recreation 
in nature's trackless forests. 
The fact that during the year 1903, it being the first 
year of the enforcement of the non-resident license law 
in Maine, there has ben a falling off in the number of 
these fatalities, has been hailed by many as indicative of 
encouragement for the future. It has been urged that 
the weeding out process which has been occasioned by 
this new system has given us a more experienced and 
trained class of hunters, less liable to these accidents 
than some of those who have formerly come here. 
Should these anticipations in the end be realized, it 
would prove the^-strongest argument in favor of the 
law that has yet been uttered by any one. 
One thing at least in the line of remedy is within the 
reach of all. Every sportsman, every adherent to the 
glorious faith in the gospel of rest and recreation 
which has been preached to the Americans by a 
Thoreau, a Murray and a host of others, can continu- 
ally in the press and upon the platform, in private and 
in public, in the form and by the glow of the camp-fire, 
iterate and reiterate the dangers which ever attach to 
the carrying of firearms into the woods and the joys 
of the chase. They can all at proper times and. places 
work unceasingly to impress upon the mind the dire 
necessity of practicing self control and moderation, 
when engaging in the sport. 
But to revert for a moment more to the line of sug- 
gestions already made. John Fisk in his essay on "In- 
spiration," says, "the modern student has learned that 
consciousness has a background as well as a foreground 
—that the number of mental processes go on within 
lis, of which we cannot always render a full and satis- 
factory account. Many a link is buried beneath the 
surface, and the coveted flash of memory, of judg- 
ment or fancy, does not always come to our bidding." 
Is it not possible that the cow-mdose law has served 
to draw from the moose hunter's background of con- 
sciousness an impulse, at the right instant, to be de- 
liberate, which is so much needed in all modes of 
hunting. I do not assert that the moose hunter has 
always been exempt from these accidents, but I be- 
lieve it is undisputed that usually they occur among 
hunters for deer. Cannot you bring to pass some inore 
rational and thoughtful mental conditions in the deer 
hunter by simply forbidding by law the killing of the 
doe? This idea has been somewhat exploited in the 
meetings of the Maine Association' arid by members 
privately. The answer has generally been that it might 
not be practical because there is. more of a similarity 
between the doe and the biick, than between the cow 
and bull. 1 arii not a hunter myself, being obliged to 
take my recreation' with the rod, rather than- with the 
gun, so I cannot speak of this so authoritatively as I 
could desire. 
But I have discussed the matter with experienced 
hunters and woodsmen and I find that many of them 
favor it, believing that it would be entirely practical. 
But assuining that there is more probability of a hunter 
killing a doe than a cow moose, would not this very 
faci" prove benefi'cial? Is iiot jiis't such a powerful' in- 
fluence upon the deer hunter's mind as this needed 
to regulate and control it in the moment of emergency? 
There is already an increasing .sentiment in Maine in 
favor of prohibiting the killing of the doe. of pre- 
serving the lives of these forest mothers in the, interest of 
general game protection. That we have arrived at a point 
where it is necessary to do this for this purpose alone, 
may be open to debate. But if such a resfriction would 
achieve a double object, if it would not only be a 
huma.ne act to the deer, but in addition thereto have a 
tendency to protect hiiman life as well, then every 
sportsman and every one- who has these interests at 
heart should stand for it and no voice should be heard 
in protest. As noble, as far reaching and a_s,.materially 
beneficial as are the fundamental principles of game 
protection to the people of Maine, and as anomalous as 
it may seem to the stranger, they have unrelenting foes, 
even here within our own State, who are continually on 
the alert to attack us where a weak spot may be found 
in our structure. It is therefore our duty to add 
strength to this code whenever it can be wisely and 
judicially done. We are not to necessarily "stand pat" 
(to borrow a newly coined political phrase), unless 
such an attitude is absolutely the- wisest one. We 
should be brave and dare to make advance movements 
whenever these interests appear to demand it. These 
unfortunate accidents may be at any time seized u.pon 
by our enemies and used against us with some effect 
among the thoughtless, and unheedful. 
I would not be understood as intending to intimate 
that there are no cases of accidental shooting in the 
woods, which are the result of carelessness and negli- 
gence and which ought to be punished. There may 
have been some which would come within this category, 
and there may be rnore of them than we are aware of. In 
any event the investigations ' provided for by the act 
before referred to are important; arid county officials 
should be vigilant in this respect, for their official in- 
quiries' 'cannot 'haV'e arty but a salutary effect. The con- 
sideartion that I have been able to give to this matter 
leads me to the unqualified belief that the entire sub- 
ject in all of its phases demands the most careful at- 
tention and the best thought of all friends to game 
protection. 
The Discatsion. . 
Hon. H. R. Virgin— 'When I came into this meeting, 
I had little idea of speaking on this paper, or any other, 
and perhaps I may give you a history of this law, as 
I have the honor of being the aiithor of it. I had been 
persuaded to prevent, if possible, these many accidents 
in our woods. So, many of them had occurred, and so 
miich misery had been wrought, that it seemed some- 
thing must be done more than was provided in the old 
common law, and one, day in the Senate .1 drafted this 
bill as it stands to-day, arid ' introduced it, and it was 
referred to our Judiciary Committee, which has matters 
of that , kind in charge. The matter was discussed in 
the Judiciary Committee and the objection was brought 
up that the author of the law had stated that the com- 
mon law was sufficient to protect matters , of that kind, 
but the more the matter was discussed the more it was 
conceded that something must be done to arouse in- 
terest, and after considerable debate back and forth in 
the Committee, the bil] was. .favorably reported and 
went on its passage thrpugh the House and,through the 
Senate., We, finally, concluded that , perhap.s the best 
reason or safest ground for adopting the, bill 'would 
be the moral effect it , would, have on the,, community 
and hunters going into the woods. '\Yhile. in general 
