A 34-year-old woman was killed in a hunting incident Saturday morning in Hebron on the first day of deer hunting season.
She was pronounced dead at the scene, a heavily wooded area 200-300 yards off Greenwood Mountain Road in the Oxford County town, according to John MacDonald, spokesman for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. The shooting happened around 10 a.m., he said.
Authorities have identified the shooter as a 38-year-old man who was part of a small hunting party that included at least one other person. He was being interviewed by the Maine Warden Service.
MacDonald said officials are still trying to determine exactly what the woman was doing in the area. Wardens say they don’t know whether she was hunting or in the woods for another reason, the Sun Journal reported.
“It looks as if she was alone, and we don’t have any other witnesses on her behalf, so that’s what’s making it a little more difficult,” MacDonald said.
MacDonald did not immediately release the names of the woman or the hunter who shot her. He said more information would be released Sunday.
Officers from the warden service, Oxford County Sheriff’s Office and Maine State Police responded, and MacDonald said wardens will remain at the scene through most of the weekend, the Sun Journal reported.
The number of hunting deaths has plummeted over the past 30 years due to mandatory hunter education courses and the requirement for hunters to wear blaze orange. But fatalities still occur. In 2012, two deer hunters in Wales fired at the same deer, and one of them, Gerard Parent, 49, was hit in the throat and died.
In 2011, William Briggs, 61, of Windham shot Peter Kolofsky, 46, in Sebago early in the hunting season. Briggs was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to three years in prison, with all but 45 days suspended.
Last year there were four hunting-related firearm injuries in Maine, three of which were self-inflicted, according to DIF&W.
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