• Help Support TNDeer:

Worst hunting-related injury

B

BSK

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 11, 1999
Messages
84,798
Reaction score
36,194
Location
Nashville, TN
I've been very lucky in that I've never incurred any serious injuries while hunting. The closest I've come to serious injury all involved treestands, especially Baker-style climbers. One fall resulted in grabbing for my hand-climber and only catching a wingnut, laying the palm of my hand open. Still carry the scars. Another Baker fall resulted in one knee collapsing the correct way on contact with the ground but the other knee snapping the wrong way. That injury took years to get past.

But again, no serious injuries. But I sure have read some nasty ones on this site. So let's hear them; your worst hunting-related injury...
 
I've only had two memorable hunting related injuries. First was coming down the mountain after dark on an ATV and the throttle cable got snagged by a limb, sending me uncontrollably full speed downhill until I hit the edge of a tree & flipped sideways, tearing my knee. I couldn't walk for weeks. Took a couple years to really heal, and still to this day I have to be careful with it.

Second was skinning a deer. While boning out a hind quarter, the boning knife slipped and poked straight into my thigh. It went several inches in and left quite a hole.

Otherwise I've been pretty fortunate. Lucky for me God protects fools!
 
Years ago when Bear Hollow mtn was know as Carter's Mountain was hunting in about 10 inches of snow and couldn't see the rocks under the snow, I stepped in a hole between 2 rocks and fell forward tearing everything in my knee loose, still have trouble with that leg.
 
Did not happen to me, but the worst one I have been around was when I was a kid. I went with dads friends to hang a stand one morning in September. One of the guys climbed up and leaned back to hammer something in about 30 feet up. He had forgotten to clip his safety harness and fell out on his back. So me and the other guy have to get the 4 wheeler and load him up and drive at least a mile back to the truck and transport to the hospital. He ended up having some back issues and several broken ribs. I remember him hitting the ground 10 feet from me and then screaming every bump we hit on the 4 wheeler ride out.
 
I too have been very lucky. Climbing with an old Baker climber umpteen years ago. About three quarters of the way up the tree I paused to rest. Stand kicked out, went all the way to ground. Still standing not a scratch. I digress. I shot a buck in field right at dark. It was raining. I went to get four-wheeler. It would not start. Grabbed the pull rope handle and yanked, one heck of a recoil. Ruptured tendon and broke finger. I didn't cry, honestly.
 
I've been very fortunate as well, some of that attributable to the fact that I am pretty risk averse. Probably the worst I've had a was small shoulder tear from grabbing onto a tree sliding down a mountain in CO. It hung on and was annoying for a few months but the injury from this trip down the mountain could have been a lot worse.
I made a dumb decision to try to find elk and went to a place that I should have known was out of my league. The good news was that I found elk but the bad news is that there was a point where I wondered if I would make it down without seriously hurting myself. I started at 10,200 feet and started climbing down a drainage. It looked nasty and against better judgment, I went. Once I got to the point that I realized just how bad it was, I was too far to turn around. My rangefinder told me the slope was 31 degrees which is insane. I basically went from 10,200 to 9381 in a little over 3/4 of a mile and due to a fairly recent fire and then massive snowfall last year, large trees were down everywhere. I literally side-hilled and fell 8-9 times. My worst fall came when I stepped wrong over a log, lost my footing and then landed on my back, scope hitting first and then I rolled downhill twice. This was about 5 minutes prior to sliding down another steep section, reaching out and grabbing a small pine to slow me down and then feeling the slight twinge in my shoulder.
 
Shooting a gobbler right-handed that was waaaaay to my right with a 3-1/2" roman candle. Stock was in exactly the wrong place when I touched the trigger. Could barely raise my arm enough to get my shirt off when I got back to the house, it was sore for weeks, and had to shoot left-handed the rest of the season.
 
Last edited:
I've been fortunate as others with many close calls.

My worst was hunting with a first gen Mathews Monster. Violent draw cycle if you know the bow. Full draw turning on a walking deer and my right elbow bumped the tree, causing me to unexpectedly and uncontrollably let the bow down. Tore my rotator cuff and stretched my labrum. The pop was like two pans banging together, saw stars and mind numbing pain. Was between jobs and insurance hadn't kicked in yet so I nursed it. Finally went to the doc and I've been to a few different ones, but none of them want to touch it because my labrum stretched and didnt tear, now they're afraid any repair would just make it worse. Shoulder pain all the time, sleep on my back, etc
 
I fell 23 feet from a hang on stand back in 2005. I'd just gotten the stand strapped to tree, and stepped onto the platform and was fixing my safety belt to the tree when the strap gave way.

Somehow, I kept from landing on my head, and managed to land on my side. My buddy who was standing there watching said that I bounced up off the ground almost waist high. I don't know how it didn't break bones. It knocked the breath out of me and as I was gasping for air, I noticed that my friend's face was as white as a bedsheet. He got sick after seeing that fall and was nauseous thinking of how it could've turned out.

What it did do, was fix my neck that had been bothering me for years after a lady ran a stop sign and t-boned me. The neck pain was gone. Not the kind of chiropractic fix I was wanting, but it worked.

The buckle on the stand was bent, and being the old friction type, it wouldn't hold. Every stand I put up now has three ratchet straps minimum, and I'm hooked up before stepping onto them. So, no serious injury on that one, but I could barely walk for a few days.

A freak thing happened at Ft. Campbell while bow hunting the Old Clarksville Base. I stepped into a Honey Locust thorn, and it slid along my shin bone for an inch or so under the skin. My leg swelled to the point of scaring me, and I was sick for a few days.
 
Lost Lake said:
A freak thing happened at Ft. Campbell while bow hunting the Old Clarksville Base. I stepped into a Honey Locust thorn, and it slid along my shin bone for an inch or so under the skin. My leg swelled to the point of scaring me, and I was sick for a few days.
Click to expand...
That makes my stomach turn just thinking about it!

Not hunting related, but still "in the woods related," I was working on a property in southern Arkansas and while driving through an overgrown pasture full of young locust trees, my right front ATV tire dropped into an unseen hole, causing the ATV to tip violently to that side. Instinctively reaching out to catch myself on one of those locust trees, a 16-penny nail-sized thorn went into the palm of my hand, completely through, and was sticking out the back of my hand. Having to pull my hand off that thorn was truly awful. Hand swelled up twice its normal size and hurt like Hades for a week.
 
BSK said:
That makes my stomach turn just thinking about it!

Not hunting related, but still "in the woods related," I was working on a property in southern Arkansas and while driving through an overgrown pasture full of young locust trees, my right front ATV tire dropped into an unseen hole, causing the ATV to tip violently to that side. Instinctively reaching out to catch myself on one of those locust trees, a 16-penny nail-sized thorn went into the palm of my hand, completely through, and was sticking out the back of my hand. Having to pull my hand off that thorn was truly awful. Hand swelled up twice its normal size and hurt like Hades for a week.
Click to expand...
Wow! That's bad! Up until that point, I'd heard that a poke from a Locust thorn could make a person sick, and after that, I was a believer.
 
2020 climbing down from stand in the dark. Hawk helium step twisted off of the tree as I was stepping on the top step. Luckily I had my saddle on and was still attached to the tree. My stomach hit the step above it before I got stopped. I thought my inerds where hanging out.
Lesson learned do not stretch out the length between the sticks to get higher.
 
I have had several minor injuries deer hunting. None required any medical attention. The one that hurt the worst was leaving my left thumb sticking up to high when I pulled the trigger on a crossbow. Missed the deer I was shooting at too. That thumb looked like I beat it with a hammer and friggin hurt for days.
 
Kirk said:
I have had several minor injuries deer hunting. None required any medical attention. The one that hurt the worst was leaving my left thumb sticking up to high when I pulled the trigger on a crossbow. Missed the deer I was shooting at too. That thumb looked like I beat it with a hammer and friggin hurt for days.
Click to expand...
I've heard horror stories about exactly that.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top