Updated Dec. 16
A man was shot in the abdomen a day shy of the end of shotgun season, on Friday afternoon, in what police said seemed to be an accident.
Edgartown Police said the person, who remains unidentified, was out with 10 to 12 other hunters in the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest, just off of Barnes Road.
At 4 pm, Edgartown Police received the call. They responded with Edgartown EMS and transported the man for treatment at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.
“The individual had a gunshot wound to the stomach,” Edgartown Police Lieutenant Michael Snowden told The Times. “The preliminary suggests it was an accidental hunting accident.”
According to Snowden, Massachusetts Environmental Police arrived on the Island on Friday and will take the lead on the investigation.
Danielle Burney, communications director for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, which Environmental Police is a part of, said the injured man had been airlifted from the Island and was “currently in stable condition.” She declined to provide further details of the case, citing the ongoing investigation.
The event came just after news that primitive firearm and crossbow hunting season would be extended by another two weeks between January and February, and just a day before the end of shotgun season. Hunters previously reported a slow start to the season.
A spokesperson for MassWildlife said incidents like this one are rare, but should be taken seriously when they happen. Usually, injuries or deaths while hunting are caused by a fall. There was a report last month of a fatality after a hunter fell out of a tree in Erving, Massachusetts.
“Our thoughts are with the hunter and his family, and we wish him a full and speedy recovery. Unfortunate incidents like this are extremely rare, but any injury is one too many. Hunting is a highly regulated activity in Massachusetts, and MassWildlife remains committed to promoting safe, responsible, and ethical hunting through education, training, and outreach,” the representative for MassWildlife said in a statement to The Times.
Updated with a comment from Danielle Burney and a statement from MassWildlife.
The deer finally get a shot.
These are the risks people take to put food on the plate and less tick in our yards. It’s an unfortunate accident.
The states own biologist said that we need to take down 4200 deer to get to a healthy population and that even that number doesn’t mean we will solve the tick borne illness problems. Meanwhile most deer are having two to three babies each spring.
There is no way we can meet our goals by just hunting for an extra two weeks with the local yokel bang-bang gang.
That’s a fairly uncomplimentary way to describe island hunters, but take note, this is how you are now viewed by much of the island population. It is ridiculous for state biologists to put a number on deer that need harvesting when they have no idea how many are here. The number of fawns each doe produces depends largely on available food supply and winter severity (not a factor here anymore). If food is abundant, they produce more. Most does on the island produce one fawn, though many do have twins, indicating a good balance between food availability and deer population. Of course if the abundant food supply includes all of your expensive plantings, I guess even more need killing.
Was Dick Chaney there in the hunting group.
The only way to seriously to seriously reduce our deer population is to use the “Texas” style hunting methods over baits. That draws the deer away from the subdivisions and they get shot from elevated blinds. Which is immensely safer than gang s of brush busters shooting towards each other. It also can be done with timed feeders that can get the deer to show up before dark.