A hunter was accidentally shot in the leg Saturday in Westminster on the first day of Maryland's most popular hunting season, Natural Resources Police said.
Three friends were unloading the ammunition from their shotguns before leaving the private property where they had been legally hunting when one of their guns went off, NRP spokewsoman Candy Thomson said.
The victim, a 44-year-old of Westminster, was flown to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he had surgery after midnight and was in critical but stable condition Sunday, Thomson said.
Police are investigating the incident, but they believe that the victim's 66-year-old friend who fired the gun did not mean to do it.
"A gun that was thought to be not loaded had a round in it," Thomson said. The three have been longtime friends, and police have "no reason to doubt that this is anything" other than an accident, she added.
Saturday kicked off modern firearm season, two weeks during which hunters are allowed to use shotguns and rifles instead of crossbows and muzzle-loaded guns. It's the most popular stretch of hunting season for the more than 75,000 hunters who hold permits to shoot deer and other wildlife in the state, Thomson said. She said the NRP increases its presence across the state during that period, which ends Dec. 13.
"It's the busiest two weeks of the entire Maryland hunting season, no matter what species you want to talk about," Thomson said.
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