Gun Injuries of All Kinds Go Up During Hunting Season

About half of Americans have a gun in the home, and hunting is a major reason why. When hunting season rolls around each fall, guns suddenly become more visible: hunters take firearms out of storage, clean and maintain them, and go to the store to purchase more guns and ammunition. As researchers, we wondered if this has any effect on gun injuries: not just during hunting, but overall. To our surprise, it did—in a big way.

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Published April 16 in the BMJ, our study of four consecutive deer-hunting seasons used data from the Gun Violence Archive, which records firearm incidents from police reports and news outlets and has proven useful for epidemiological study. We looked at different types of firearm incidents across both rural and urban settings. Despite hunting being an activity that is often associated with rural communities, about 75% of deer hunters actually live within metropolitan areas.

We found that across 10 states, the start of deer hunting season was associated with an uptick in overall firearm incidents—about a 12.3% increase from baseline. There was, not surprisingly, a 566% uptick in hunting-related firearm incidents, but despite this enormous increase, these were still quite rare compared to other incident types.

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Importantly, there were increases in several more common types of firearm incidents not related to hunting, including suicide (11.1% increase), alcohol or substance use related incidents (87.5% increase), defensive use (27.8% increase), domestic violence (27.4% increase), home invasion/robbery (30.4% increase), and incidents related to appropriate licensure to carry a gun (19.4% increase). We saw no significant increases in incidents involving children or police officers.

Our study’s findings were consistent with a similar study focusing on rural counties. Both studies have two important implications.

The first is that hunting season may be accompanied by broader risks of injury that have not been well appreciated. Gun injuries related to hunting are to be expected, but our study underscores that the increased availability of firearms at the start of hunting season may also increase the risks of gun injuries unrelated to hunting, including suicide and violent crime.

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While our study found increases in gun injuries at the start of hunting season, the time to build awareness of the issue and to prepare is much sooner. In addition to basic safe handling practices like treating every firearm as if it was loaded, some of the recommended strategies to prevent injury include the use of various locks and lockboxes, firearm disassembly, storage out of the home at the location where they are to be used (e.g. shooting range), and separating ammunition until it is to be used. Cable locks–which may be less effective than other methods but are better than nothing–may be available to firearm owners at no cost.

The second implication of our study relates to the broader, sometimes contested question of how the availability of guns impacts gun-related injuries. The best quality evidence on this question comes from “natural experiments” that identify circumstances in which the availability of guns or access to them sharply changes.  

For example, in the months following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting—which occurred at an arbitrary time with respect to the availability of firearms and risk of firearm-related incidents—an estimated 3 million additional firearms were sold in the U.S., corresponding to an estimated 57 to 66 additional accidental gun-related deaths.

Because firearms suddenly increase in availability and access in the lead up to hunting season, a similar opportunity occurs to study what happens with firearm incidents—both hunting and non-hunting related. 

Firearm safety is a priority for both gun owners and Americans more broadly. Recognizing that the start of hunting season poses gun injury risks outside of hunting may make that time of year a little bit safer.