Originally Posted By Intune:
WTF!?  Is it a doe, a spike, a four pointer, a ten pointer or a pony?  Or people fucking walking through the woods. I’m 68 and I’m not cutting that dude any slack. Do you have macular degeneration or something that has jacked up your eyesight? Quit fucking hunting.  Zero excuse. None.

Originally Posted By johnh57:
Had a friend a few years back that told me when he was a young lad out with dad at hunting camp in Minnesota he heard a shot and a bullet whistling through the brush just in front of him.  Scared the bejesus out of him.  He made his way back to camp, one of the other hunters was telling how he got a 'sound shot' off a little earlier, but didn't hit anything.

Originally Posted By gojoe:



I have heard of sound shooting as a method used by people who claim to be hunters.
I have never encountered it myself.
But the penalty for doing it, should be castration just to keep them from breading.

Originally Posted By 32ACP:


This is the real question.  The "mistaken game" happens all over the world & there are studies without answers, unfortunately.

When I covered trauma, I saw several hunting accidents that were fatal.  The common statement in the report from LEO was "the shooter claims to have seen X" where X was either a deer or turkey.

Only ONE case was a NOT mistaken in that case, poor choices & failure of common sense was the issue.  Two friends were unaware of where each other was deer hunting.  So, when a deer ran between them, they were directly in each other's line of fire.  The one guy got hit by his friend's bullet AFTER it went through the deer, which was probably why I could save him.  It was a belly shot & fortuitously, the friend threw him in the car & drove to the ER.

The other cases were head shots.  One hunter who accidentally killed a family member SWORE there was a tom turkey he SAW, not heard.  But it wasn't.  It was a teen family member.  The other 3 were headshots.  

So, how does a human mistake another human for a deer or turkey?

The corollary to this question of mistaken game is the same as people who claim to see aliens, UFOs/UAPs, bigfoot, angels, ghosts, faces in French Toast, etc, etc, etc. IMO.

Psychological priming and the brain's processing of incomplete information & tendency to "filling in the blanks" to make something is a very real yet poorly understood phenomena.  It is understood as well as used in marketing & brand recognition in advertising, propaganda, etc but the actual mechanism isn't completely understood.

There are optical illusions online one can search to see distorted shapes, colors, objects, etc.

With hunting: alcohol, poor vision, poor lighting, poor choices, poor safety and it's no wonder these events occur.

I quit deer hunting in my 20s after being shot at by a "fellow hunter" who was running after a buck in a scrub area with poor visibility, he shooting from his hip with an unplugged (he was supposed to have 3 shots, not 5) 12G.  The buckshot missed me, but did hit the tree I was leaning against.

Said "hunter" also pointed his shotgun directly at me when I saw the deer go down & he didn't and walked over & called to him.  Sounds like a real, "ethic human," no?

That was the moment I realized if I chose to continue to place myself around idiots with guns, that's on me.  Most of the people I knew were more like this guy than me, so it was an easy choice.

 The daughter and boyfriend of a 39-year-old woman shot and killed in southern Delaware told NBC10's Tim Furlong that they want more answers into how their loved one could get shot by a hunter while walking in a field.

Maria Chilel Soto was walking with her boyfriend, Miniveldo, and his two children at around 7:40 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 18, in a field near her home in Ellendale, Sussex County, when she was shot in the stomach by a hunter who believed she was a deer, police said.

“All of a sudden I heard an explosion. She had covered her ears and she fell,” Miniveldo said through a translator.

Soto's daughter ran from the house to reach her mother after the shooting.

“When I got there she was on the ground and she wasn't like responding or anything,” her daughter said.

As Soto was dying from her injuries, police say 74-year-old Walter Moorhead of Salisbury, Maryland, walked up looking for a deer he believed he had shot.

The distance from which the shot was fired has not been confirmed. Moorhead reportedly fired from a ground-level obstacle hunters use to keep animals from spotting them.

“Once he got there he told him, ‘Why did he do that? Is he a psychopath? Is he racist?’ He was just asking for a reason,” a translator for Miniveldo said.

Miniveldo said Moorhead tried to run away but stopped after being told police were on the way and that Miniveldo was not going to let him leave.

State environmental officials told NBC10 that the land has a permit allowing hunting because of crop damage from deer. However, specific hunters must be on an approved list for the property.

It remains unclear whether Moorhead was approved to hunt on the property and whether he was permitted to hunt there at that time of day. Those questions are part of the ongoing investigation.

Moorhead has been charged with manslaughter and related charges. He posted bail and was released while awaiting trial.

NBC10's call to Moorhead's Maryland home was not answered.

Soto's family, meanwhile, is planning her funeral and seeking answers about how the shooting happened.

“I don't know if it was on purpose or anything, but it doesn't seem right how he already got out,” Soto's daughter said.

This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC Philadelphia. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC Philadelphia journalist edited the article for publication.

Originally Posted By stone-age:
I was out on my own property once investigating an odd sound, in the thickest fog I've ever seen in my life. And because I was walking around and making some noise somebody started slinging bullets at me.
It never surprises me when a "hunter" shoots somebody. Everybody has stories about something that happened or something that almost happened.
I don't believe I remember hunting being a constitutional right.

Originally Posted By EamonnWright:
I made the mistake of not checking my calendar a few years ago when bird season in a state forest near me was kicking off. A woman bird hunter approached me and my dog on a fire road and began berating me. I admitted that I screwed up and apologized, but she wasn't done with me. I was lucky my dog or me weren't mistaken for game fowl and blasted. At that point I told her if she couldn't tell the difference between a bird, a person, and a 100 GSD, her guns should be seized, her hunting license revoked, and she should be committed to an asylum. We walked off as she fumed even more.

Originally Posted By Monsterbishi:


Not sure if serious or just misinformed?

Originally Posted By FIRE1:
This is one of the reasons I like hunting from an elevated box blind over a feeder on leased private land. The chances of of someone mistaking my blind for a deer are basically zero. The chances of me mistaking a deer for something else is basically zero because the feeder brings them into clear view, and if I decide to shoot a deer I've been watching it for a minute. And, being on private property, which is 2000 acres in the middle of nowhere, means I have a much better chance of knowing who is out there and where they should be hunting. I've hunted public land, and people are stupid.

Originally Posted By FIRE1:
This is one of the reasons I like hunting from an elevated box blind over a feeder on leased private land. The chances of of someone mistaking my blind for a deer are basically zero. The chances of me mistaking a deer for something else is basically zero because the feeder brings them into clear view, and if I decide to shoot a deer I've been watching it for a minute. And, being on private property, which is 2000 acres in the middle of nowhere, means I have a much better chance of knowing who is out there and where they should be hunting. I've hunted public land, and people are stupid.

Originally Posted By Orion10182011:
I was shocked to learn just how many hunters will shoot at noise hoping it's a deer.

Originally Posted By gODZOOKIE:
….or maybe he actually wanted to shoot her. Could’a just been a mean and ornery SOB and thought he could get away with it.
If he’s deemed to have all his faculties that’s a motive he’d never admit to and should be considered.
But then again…..
He possibly shouldn’t even be driving at that age much less, handling a firearm

Originally Posted By GTwannabe:


This.  Buck fever is a thing and you DO NOT want to be out in the woods on opening or closing day of deer season.  Fucking moron fudds start blindly blasting into bushes as soon as they hear something rustle in the brush.

Originally Posted By PCB66:
In my long Boomer life for every responsible hunter that I have known there have probably been two or three that had shit for brains.

Originally Posted By diesel1:


Um.....74 y.o.? Possibly but most of us in that age group have full control of our faculties yet.

Originally Posted By Orion10182011:
I was shocked to learn just how many hunters will shoot at noise hoping it's a deer.

Originally Posted By Princeton:
Updated article has a few more answers:

Loved ones of Delaware woman allegedly shot and killed by hunter seek answers