S14EP16: Fall Woods, Safer Hunts

The first cold mornings call us to the woods, but the most important ritual of deer season isn’t sighting in or scouting—it’s how we manage risk when the headlamp clicks on. We sit down with to unpack why the most dangerous moments aren’t always the shot, but the climb, the drive, and the quiet drift toward complacency. From national trends that show firearm fatalities falling to the stubborn injuries caused by falls and field dressing, we trace the real hazards and the simple habits that stop them.

Host: Danny Smith

Guest: Kevin Nix

https://safestart.com/file/nctrb2/Safe%20Treestand%20and%20Firearm%20Use.pdf 

Transcript

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Danny Smith

 Welcome back to SafeTalk with SafeStart. I'm Danny Smith. And the next time you take a step outside, uh, you're probably going to take notice of something. Uh the dog days of summer are starting to slip away, and fall is now in the year. And I just love this time of year. In fact, I took a few days off a couple of weeks back and just uh kind of went to the woods and enjoyed the beautiful fall foliage and things like that for a couple of days with my wife and actually took our dogs with us, uh, which was an adventure too, but uh having to keep up with two dachshunds all the time. But that's another story for another day. A lot of folks this time of year are starting to head for the woods, but for a different reason. And that is uh a lot of people enjoy hunting, and a lot of folks are already out there, particularly some of the bow hunters. Uh, and they're going to be soon joined by, well, literally millions of gun hunters. And this is a perfect time for us to take a few minutes and to talk a little bit about hunting safety. And we're primarily going to talk today about deer hunting, but uh keep in mind uh some of the basic things that we'll discuss apply to all forms of hunting. For example, I've never done a lot of deer hunting myself. Uh, I grew up uh hunting small game, uh particularly Bob White quail. It was one of the things my dad always enjoyed. He always seemed to have a couple of pointer bird dogs, as we would call them, around. And uh I just love easing up slowly behind the dogs as they're pointing at such a beautiful sight and just kind of easing up on a covey of quail. And then, well, you know what happens next. Usually when they flush, you get that brrrrrr and you get you know what's scared out of you. But anyway, I love that it's just a fun, fun thing that I grew up doing and love doing. Don't have a lot of time to hunt nowadays. And honestly, it's kind of tough to find a place to hunt around here between the fire ants and uh people gobbling up all the land. Uh, it's kind of hard to find a place to bird hunt now. So, I don't do it as much as I used to, but it was uh still quite enjoyable as I was growing up. Now, I know some of our listeners aren't hunters, so I'm assuming the ones of you who are listening do have a vested interest. And perhaps if uh if you don't hunt, hey, share it with somebody that you know that does, be it a family member or a coworker, uh, share this with somebody else that does hunt. And uh, let's see if we can help keep them a bit safe. We'll leave the discussion of the ethics of harvesting games to other folks. This is a safety podcast, so that's the part we're going to focus on today. But, you know, I think it's fair to say, whether you're new to the sport or a seasoned hunter, Safe Starts really are pretty good hunting buddy. First things first, let's talk about a few things here before I introduce our guests for today. Obviously, you need to know the rules and the regulations for your area, where you buy your license is a good place to start, and they can help you with things like bag limits, proper tagging, and so forth. I also probably should, as we're getting started, just mentioned this is not going to be a hey, do this, don't do that kind of thing. Uh, we tend not to do that with Safe Start anyway, but we do want to give you some tools that you can use in addition to the podcast here. So, we do have a tip sheet on tree stands and proper handling of firearms that we'll include in the show notes. And so, you can pass those out. Uh, certainly read them yourself if you're a hunter, but you can also pass those out to the hunters in your organization and in your families as well. And talking about tree stands, statistically, that's where a lot of the hunting accidents occur. So before I introduce today's guests, uh, a little bit of research on hunting safety, which I think you may find of interest. There are over 103 million U.S. residents that enjoyed wildlife-related activities of some sort, be that deer, moose, bear, we could go on and on and on there, like me, uh, dove hunting or quail hunting. Hunting is a very popular sport of lifestyle and well, away of income for a lot of folks. Over the past 20 years, we've seen a decrease in unintentional fatalities by firearms. And it's gone down by over 50% from the years of 1997 through 2017. And part of that may be because we've seen some things like required hunter education courses for younger hunters as they're beginning to hunt and get their license for the first time. So a lot of things like that may be contributing to that, just as we're doing a better job of educating everybody up front. I think it's important to say, though, that most gun deaths, well, they don't involve hunters. I mean, to this point, National Safety Council says of all gun-related deaths in 2017, 60% were due to suicide and 37% due to homicide. So hunting accidents is related to guns, it certainly happens. But as we talked about a moment ago, a lot of this comes back from other things, including, well, the tree stands. Hunting accidents is certainly a kind of a catch-all term that can be defined by injuries that occurred in the field and not necessarily just by the unintentional discharge of a firearm. So many major injuries happened due to lacerations while field dressing game, uh, we talked about their tree stands, trips and falls that happened, cuts, broken bones, immobility, and possibly even death. In 2017, there were 17 million hunters with firearms, according to the National Sporting Goods Association, and only 35 injuries occurred per 100,000 participants, the vast majority of which were non-serious injuries. When you think about it, I mean, looking at that data, you're like 130 times more likely to be injured playing football, or 62 times more likely to die in an automobile accident, and 58 more times likely to be injured playing basketball. I always thought that was supposed to be a non-contact sport, although it's not the way we played it when I was in high school for sure. Anyway, the most common reason for medical treatment as it relates to hunting activities may be surprising. A lot of this relates to cardiac disease and lacerations that were occurring during the time when you were field dressing the game. Now, Canada has little research and statistics when it comes to firearm-related injuries, but a study in Quebec reports that 37% of accidental deaths there occurred from some type of hunting incident. And 5% occurred when the shooter was carrying a firearm, and 48% occurred during other activities. So you think about that. All of those numbers tell us a story. The story of how hunting-related injuries and fatalities are on the decline, which is great news. For most states in the U.S. and countries around the world, these numbers really are at historic lows. But again, we got to make sure that we're thinking about this and making this more important than just numbers. I'll go through some statistics here just to kind of set the stage for this. The accidents that are happening just underscore the fact that there's never a good time to be complacent. And I guess that's maybe the best way to put this. Complacency, as we know from our safe start training, can get us in trouble. And again, the number of tree stand accidents are they're trending in the right direction, but man, they can be so, so deadly, as you can imagine. And most of those accidents happen when you're either coming up or down the tree, as you can imagine. So uh great idea to always have your safety harness on and uh make sure that you remain attached to the tree once your feet leave the ground until your feet are back on the ground. And again, there's just a reminder the show note will have some information there on tree stands and firearm safety. All right, uh, I've talked enough here. Let me get to our guest. Familiar guest for you if you've been listening to the podcast over the past few weeks. Kevin Nicks is with us, and Kevin's one of our newer consultants. So, uh, Kevin, welcome back to the podcast.

Kevin Nix 

Thanks, Danny, for uh for having me back this week. This subject, it really brings back some sweet memories, times I spent in the woods with both of my boys.

Danny Smith

That's the thing about hunting, you know, it's uh it's not just about harvesting game, it is about having some great memories and building some great memories with folks. And like I mentioned at the top, I don't have a lot of time or a lot of opportunities to hunt nowadays, but I do remember the times that I have hunted, and that's it's always been a great source of memories for me. But, you know, in all activities that involve humans, including hunting, well, if there's a human involved, there's an opportunity for human error. And uh I'd like to kind of start there, if you would, and maybe we break this down for you and your experience into two categories. And the first one we'll call uh BS. Okay, no, don't everybody jump ahead at me over there. We're going to call it before SafeStart. Okay, I don't know what y'all all are thinking, but before SafeStart. So, if you don't mind, Kevin, uh, talk to us a little bit about how your behavior, specifically your behaviors while hunting, how that's changed since you've been exposed to SafeStart.

Kevin Nix 

Yeah, sure, Danny. Uh I'm now I'm much like you don't have near the time, but when I did, and as you put it, the BS before SafeStart, really there was little thought put into the safety of hunting and everything involved, other than the basic gun safety. I mean, we all know that guns are deadly, but around the general prepping for the day before we headed out or you know, driving to the land where we hunted, climbing up the trees, uh, whether it was tree climbers or with the fixed stands. I mean, I've done both. Even setting everything in order once we were up the tree and got settled, you know, I've slipped with both types of stands before. A lot of that's due to the bulky clothing that you're wearing because of the cold weather, the big boots that you have to wear to keep your feet warm. You know, I never really stopped to analyze those close calls that that I had encountered over those many years where we were hunting. And so, prior to SafeStart, once again, no real thought about driving at 4 a.m. with little to no sleep the night before, no thought about climbing with a weapon over the shoulder, you know, over our shoulders as we were going up the tree stand. Really no thought of what could happen if we slipped or we fell. And, you know, asking myself, how could it have been worse when those instances occurred?

Danny Smith

Sure, you know, and you're talking about driving at 4 a.m. I had uh an early flight home today, and uh I was out driving, fortunately, just a couple of miles to the airport from the hotel that I was staying at, but thinking about driving at 4 a.m., just a couple of miles to get to the airport where I could go to sleep on the plane, let the uh let the pilot do the driving. That's one thing. But uh, you know, I know I've got friends who literally their hunting leases are you know an hour, two hours away. And so, it's not unusual for them to get up even earlier than 4 a.m. to get to their hunting lease before time to go hunting in the morning to try to beat daybreak before they get there.

Kevin Nix 

Yeah, all the things we do for the sports that we love to engage in. So, uh it was uh it was about a 45-minute drive to uh to where we hunted. So, I feel your pain there.

Danny Smith

Thinking about that and just the driving and all the other things that are involved there, you know, I mean, statistically, driving is one of the most dangerous things that we all do. We know that. Uh, but then when you add in the early mornings and things like that, and then if you have been hunting for a while, it's pretty easy to see how that uh complacency can kind of slip in there. Obviously, the fatigue being up that early, even if you're an early riser, which I am not. But you know, it's easy to see how that state to error pattern could slip in and cause us problems when we're doing activities like this. Let's think about the second part of that. We'll get past the BS, the before SafeStart. What kind of changes did you implement or see in your hunting experiences? We'll go PS. How about that? Post-SafeStart, how about that one?

Kevin Nix

After SafeStart, post-SafeStart, we begin to plan the trip in advance and think about those potential states and errors. You know, we would uh inspect our climber if we were using that type of tree stand uh the night before, make sure things were in uh in good shape. Obviously, we wanted to combat that fatigue with proper rest. We'd have to go to bed just a little bit earlier the night before to get that proper rest. You think about driving uh under the cover of darkness at 4 a.m. and we had to slow things down just a little bit due to the hazards on the road or you know the deer that may jump out in front of you, and then we would work to identify where everyone would be in their stands. We knew the lay of the land. We'd been there many, many times, and we knew where the fixed stands were and whatnot, and we wanted to get an idea of where everybody was going to be located. And then once you know you get to your stand, you climb up. Always wanted to maintain three points of contact. That's something that we had learned early on, but really never give a lot of thought. Stabilize while we were sitting up in the stand, and then once we got settled, tie off with our harness in case something happened.  And then we would pull our weapons up. And those we wanted to make sure that our weapons were unloaded until we got them up in our lap and got settled. You know, all of those things that I just mentioned, Danny, that it took extra time to do it. You know, what we were doing is self-triggering on that rushing, if you will. And those efforts helped us combat that complacency that you mentioned earlier. You know, I've climbed many a tree stands with without a negative outcome, uh, whether it be a fall or something uh very, very painful or memorable, if you will. So, I'm I luckily avoided what might be inevitable uh had I not began to look at that state to error risk pattern. You know, Danny, I believe it made me a better hunter. I if not that, I know it me it made me a safer hunter, if you will.

Danny Smith

Sure. Yeah, I got tickled as you were talking about driving to the deer lease or wherever, um, and the deer jumping out there. Uh, I remember uh actually as we were talking about recording this podcast, one of our other consultants sent us a note and said, hey, don't forget about those of us who don't hunt, who uh have to watch out for the deer who start moving a lot this time of year. And uh I remember back years ago before I became a consultant, the company that I was working with, uh, we had a plant over in Mississippi. And uh I went in one day and I asked our shipping manager, who I knew loved to deer hunt. I said, uh, so hey, uh, how's it going? Have you had you had any luck this year so far uh deer hunting? And he said, oh yeah, my wife and I have gotten three so far. I said, really? Your wife hunts with you? He says, well, no, no, no, no, you don't get ahead of me. He says, I shot one. He said, and she took one out with her Tahoe and then uh about a week later took a second one out with a rental vehicle while her Tahoe was in the shop. So, uh it certainly can be an issue for sure. Uh let's get back to the to the things that are going on in the deer stand or around the deer stand. Uh, you know, another thing you'd mentioned just before we started uh was that while you've been pretty fortunate uh and pretty lucky that you weren't hurt before SafeStart. You're telling me about a friend of yours that, well, wasn't quite so lucky. Do you mind sharing a bit of his story about with everyone?

Kevin Nix 

Absolutely, Danny. Now, Steve, he's a good friend of mine. We've been friends for a long period of time, many, many years. Uh, someone we hunted with quite often. He's extremely lucky to be able to tell his story, and obviously he's given me the permission to share his story on this podcast. But it's one where he sustained serious injuries as a result of a fall while he was climbing uh a ladder of a tripod stand. So, a little bit of background about Steve. You know, Steve spent many, many years in the woods, so he had the experience which really helped set the scene, if you will, uh, for what happened uh that uh early one morning.  So, Steve, after working uh up until 4 a.m. and a long shift, he left work, uh had to drive away to the land where you know where we hunted. So, he gathered some things from his truck once he got to the land and then proceeded to his stand. Once he got to the to the ladder stand and began climbing the ladder. And he was holding his rifle in his left hand the way he tells his story. And he was reaching to grab the next rung higher on the ladder with his right hand. You know, all that is a no-no. We've been taught that to maintain three points of contact. So, we know that's a no-no when you're going up and down a ladder. But obviously, you know, Steve had done this many times before, and back to the way I mentioned earlier, nothing serious happened. So, Steve thought he could continue to do so. But unfortunately, our luck runs out, and it usually runs out when we least expect it. So, when Steve went to grab that last rung before reaching the top of the ladder, he missed. And he fell backwards approximately 12 feet. And on his way down, his reaction would have put was to put his hands behind him to help soften the blow because he knew that impact was really going to be bad. Absolutely. Now, Steve sustained dislocations to both of his wrists as well as to his right shoulder, multiple fractures to his right forearm. He suffered a dislocated right ankle, and he split the shin bone. Since he never let go of his rifle on the way down, and let me remind the folks on this call, he had a round chambered in his rifle. On his way down, uh multiple fractures uh suffered uh to that hand, uh, and to the bones of that left hand. You know, nasty injuries, if you will, Danny, for sure. But luckily for him, there were a couple of other hunters that he had met at the land that morning, folks that he knew, and they heard him yell once he fell. They were able to get to him quickly, stabilized him as best they could, and then loaded him onto one of the four-wheelers that was in the area, and then took him back to the camp where they put him in the truck and then had to take him on to the emergency room. And Steve underwent immediate surgery to stabilize things and to repair some of the damage that was uh was there and then followed up with several additional procedures to further repair and restore over the next couple of months. Now Steve missed nearly six months of work and it's obvious he could have missed more. But when Steve tells his story, not only was he impacted physically with all those injuries, but he also tells of the financial hit that it he encountered, both for him and his family. He tells the story not too long before this had happened, he had purchased a brand-new truck. And unfortunately, while he was out, he couldn't afford to make the payment, so he had to let the truck go back. But you know what? Steve's grateful. He had to let the truck go back, but it could have been far, far worse. He lost his truck, but he could have very easily lost his life, or as a result, being paralyzed for the rest of his life had things panned out just a little bit differently.

Danny Smith

Yeah, that's uh very, very fortunate that the outcome wasn't worse. Thinking about that, uh, it reminds me back uh, you know, as a part of our safe start training, we talk about how that it's not always the most dangerous things that we do that quote unquote get us. Sometimes it's the thing that we do on a regular basis. And for a lot of folks, climbing a tree stand or climbing a ladder is something that's routine for them. Uh, and I remember years ago, uh I was down uh doing some work uh down in Sulfur, Louisiana, and I remember as uh the safety director was introducing me to his group that morning. He said to his workers, and a lot of them were longtime folks that had been there for a number of years with a lot of seniority, and he looked at them and he said, you know, we're a chemical plant. We deal with a lot of dangerous stuff all the time. We deal with caustic chemicals, heavy lifts, confined space. And he went down a list of five or six other things. He said, but if you stop and you think about it, not saying we don't have danger here in our workplace, but we certainly have uh seen a lot of our coworkers who are not able to return to work because of simple things that have happened outside of work where we've just gotten a bit complacent. And uh he talked about a couple of folks who'd been injured in some traffic accidents, but I found it interesting that he mentioned we even had a person who fell from a deer stand. And as I was standing in the front of the room beside him as he said that I remember seeing all the people in the room kind of nodding their heads. You know, he didn't name a name, but everybody there knew the story for sure. And, you know, I mean, statistically, we've all heard the from the National Safety Council, uh, for example, that the average fatal fall is six feet or less. So back to Steve again. You know, he was really, fortunate. Uh how how's this affected him since then?

Kevin Nix 

Well, you know, he's been able to return to work uh shortly after that happened after recovering for the for the several months that he was out. A couple of things that Steve has is has done differently, if you will, he's made many changes because of this incident. Obviously, he no longer climbs uh with anything in his hands, not just up and down a tree stand, but at work and even at home. You know, I know uh a lot of what Steve encounters at work is up and down fixed ladders and A-frame ladders. And he constantly talks about three points of contact, and he references uh this incident as a result. Back to when he's in the woods hunting, he waits till he gets to the top side and gets settled. Before he goes up the ladder, he ties a rope to his weapon, his rifle, and then he ties it to the back side of his belt or a belt loop or something, and he'll chase that or he'll allow that that uh rope to chase him up, if you will. He gets settled, and then he pulls the weapon up. And once again, now that weapon is unloaded, he will not chamber it until he gets uh that weapon in his lap and everything is good, stable, and secure. And even though there's some folks that were there with him that morning uh that were nearby and could get him to uh the advanced medical care that he needed, uh Steve no longer hunts alone. And a couple of things that he does additionally, if he knows he's going to be working from an elevated height at work, uh he always makes sure that there's somebody in or around the area, makes them aware of that just in case something happens. So, a lot of changes that Steve's made, not just in the in the woods, but also around his home as well as what he does at work.

Danny Smith

That's great. Yeah, and thinking about, you know, kind of bringing this back to SafeStart a bit, um thinking about what happened with Steve. I can see probably uh well, as we often say, complacency seems to be there, even if it's just kind of lurking in the background. But I think probably some complacency there for him for sure, right?

Kevin Nix 

Yeah, once again, that state to error risk pattern that we know so well. And when we teach uh sessions, that's what we want to draw the attention to for everyone. When you think about that pattern, obviously rushing was a contributing factor. He tried to shortcut first and foremost by not uh waiting until he got to the top side to pull his weapon up. So, Danny, you mentioned complacency, those many, many years of experience in and out of the woods, uh climbing up and down those ladders, uh probably many times once again, time and a time again, just reaching and grabbing without maintaining three points of contact. That's a classic complacency. And I mean you could even argue fatigue uh was a contributing one state there. Uh he worked the night before and didn't get proper rest. So those states led to you know, those critical errors. His eyes and mind weren't uh on the task at hand. Uh he was looking above where he was headed instead of that next rung. Obviously, his mind wasn't engaged with uh, you know, the three points of contact. And obviously those led to the loss of balance, traction, and grip. And you know, when you lose your BTG, we call it on uh on an elevated surface, gravity takes hold and it pulls you down. And in this case, it pulled Steve down very, very quickly.

Danny Smith

Yeah, and gravity can be just very, very unforgiving, I think is the best way to describe it there. Um, you know, it's amazing. We see this state to error pattern in so many different situations. And I think uh those of us who do hunt, uh be it occasional like I do, or on a regular basis, like some of our listeners, you've probably experienced some things where certainly the state to error pattern was present there. Uh you were talking about Steve getting into the tree stand and being very fatigued. Uh, reminded me of the number of folks that uh I've talked to who have fallen asleep in deer stands. Actually, pretty common, I think. I think it's just a good place to take a nap.

Kevin  Nix

But uh you've been there and have done that, my friend.

Danny Smith

Yeah, and if you don't uh tie off when you get there, well, you're at an elevated surface already. So, uh tumbling out of a deer stand uh from 14, 15, 16 feet, uh that's not a good way to wake up flying through the air, I don't think, right?

Kevin Nix

Absolutely uh not. And if you don't wake up on the uh on the way down, that sudden stop will wake you up.

Danny Smith

Absolutely. Uh it's not the fall that gets you, it's that sudden stop at the end, right?

Kevin Nix

So, it hurts like the Dickens.

Danny Smith

Absolutely. Uh so let's go back to Steve one more time here. You know, you mentioned a couple of things there. We always look at kind of the problem, if you will, uh, which in our case is the state to error pattern, but we also come back and we look at solution, which for us is the critical error reduction techniques or the search. And you mentioned a couple of things I think that really kind of relate back to that CERTs of practicing building habits. And you mentioned a few things that he'd done there. Um, number one, making sure that he didn't have things in his hand, so he had three points of contact all the time, right? Using the hall rope to bring things up. Yeah, all those things are that that's a form of habits, right? So, he changed some of his habits, changed the way he was doing things, even though he had other habits prior to that, right?

Kevin Nix 

Absolutely. That you know that critical error reduction technique uh to a T, uh, developing those better habits. Now, unfortunately, before this occurred, he did not analyze those near misses or close calls, uh, but now he does that even uh he even today he'll tell a story about you know a near miss or uh a near fatal, if you will. And so he he's beginning to home in and he's really embraced the SafeStart concepts uh and philosophies. And now, even looking at others, uh he's got grandkids that may go into the woods with him. So, he's not only looking for things that they may be doing where he can potentially intervene, but he's still looking for other people that may be potentially behaving in an unsafe fashion. And he's learning from them as well.

Danny Smith

Sure. Yeah, and I think that's one of the great things about that, sir. I as I often say, you know, its number one, it gives you the opportunity to internalize that and say, okay, I need to make sure I don't make that same mistake. But as you said, I mean, if it's a friend, a family member or coworker, or sometimes even just a fellow hunter in the woods, it does give you the opportunity to say, hey, you know, I'm not being preachy here, but just, you know, just want to intervene here and kind of have a discussion with you about something I noticed here. I don't want to see you get hurt. Uh, and then obviously in Steve's case, he would uh he would have a heck of a story to share with him for sure about what happened with him, right? So, Kevin, uh, this has been great to catch up today. And I think that's been a really, really uh good way for us just to kind of talk a little bit about hunting safety and specifically how the SafeStart state to error pattern and the search can help us with that uh and understanding some of those hazards that maybe we don't always think about. So, if you would uh remind the folks again how to reach out to you and how to get in contact with you.

Kevin Nix 

Sure, Danny. It's kevin. And that's N is in November at safestart.com. Once again, kevin.n.@safetartcom.

Danny Smith

Thanks so much, Kevin. It's been a lot of fun talking with you again, and uh I really look forward for you joining us again on the podcast in the future. 

So, on behalf of Kevin and the entire team here at SafeTalk with SafeStart, thanks for listening today. Uh, be sure to check out the tip sheets that we mentioned earlier in the show notes and share those with the folks that you know who are hunters for SafeTalk with SafeStart. I'm Danny Smith.