Understanding negligence, liability, and case law in a turkey hunt
While personal injury claims involving hunting accidents are rare, they are not unique. A successful claim, like any other, requires proof of duty, breach, and causation. A plaintiff must show that a duty of care was owed, that this duty was breached by falling below a standard of care, and that this breach directly caused an injury.
Turkey hunters have a legal duty to other hunters to not shoot them. An individual can be held liable for injuries caused by accidental shootings if they fail to follow established safety standards. The standard of care in a hunting accident remains that of ordinary prudence under the circumstances (Mikula v. Dubila, 94 AD2d 503 [4th Dept 1983]). In New York, this means a hunter must act as a reasonably prudent person, ensuring that they positively identify their target and avoid unnecessary risk (De Ryss v. N.Y. Cent. R.R. Co., 275 N.Y. 85, 9 N.E.2d 788 [1937]). If a hunter shoots before confirming what they saw, then they may be responsible for the injuries that follow.
This article examines three hunting mishaps in New York, tracing how courts assess liability when one hunter mistakes another for game. Along the way, it considers what these accidents reveal about the value of state trial court data in strategic legal research. Legal researchers, after all, typically encounter the law through appellate decisions. These decisions shape our sense of what the law is, even though they capture only a fraction of how it’s actually practiced. This is because most hunting accidents—like most civil cases—never reach appeal, leaving us to wonder: is there a better way to observe the law in motion—to see what really happens when things go wrong in the woods?
What causes most turkey hunting injuries?
Most turkey hunting injuries occur when hunters accidentally shoot one another, often because they’ve misidentified a hunter as game. According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, 78 percent of turkey hunting injuries between 1989 and 1995 involved one hunter mistaking another hunter for a turkey.
Common risk factors include:
- stalking too closely;
- wearing colors that blend with turkey plumage;
- failing to positively identify a target before shooting.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission highlights the third factor as the most important, emphasizing that most accidents happen when hunters fire on sounds, movement, or flashes of color without confirming the target. As we will see, this factor is also how most turkey hunting accidents make their way into our courtrooms.
How do courts determine liability in turkey hunting accidents?
Access to court records is essential for evaluating cases, drafting motions, and shaping effective litigation strategy. Appellate decisions are the court records most readily available to legal researchers. They provide clear, structured answers to legal questions, and they are often accompanied by trial-level documents, transcripts, and exhibits relevant to the issues under review.
Appellate opinions play an instrumental role in shaping our understanding of what the law should be. So, let’s start there, with a case from the Fourth Department of the Appellate Division in New York.
According to appellate case law, what happens after someone gets shot during the pursuit of prey? How is liability determined in a turkey hunting accident?
Appellate case study: Jacobs v. Kent (2003)
It’s the turn of the century. As global anxieties about Y2K clear the air, James Kent fires into dense brush after hearing a gobble and seeing a flash of red. But it wasn’t a turkey he hit—it was Neil Jacobs, another hunter.
There are many factors that go into determining whether or not a hunter is legally liable for a hunting accident. Liability hinges on the details of the incident, with negligence being a key factor in determining fault. Did Kent act as a reasonably prudent person under the circumstances? The answer, according to Jacobs, is no. In his filing, Jacobs argued that turkey hunters should not shoot until they clearly see the whole turkey and are able to ascertain its gender. Here, the Fourth Department of the Appellate Division found a triable issue of fact. A jury trial, not a motion for summary judgment, should decide if Kent failed to follow that rule.
Why go beyond appellate opinions when researching liability?
The doctrine of stare decisis promises consistency, holding that similar hunting accident cases should be decided in a similar manner. The problem, however, is that not every hunting accident raises the same legal questions with the same material facts. In a trial court, those differences can add up quickly. Pressed for time, judges face shifting narratives, imperfect information, and fast-moving dockets, all of which can produce divergent outcomes even when the legal issues appear to match.
Hunters misidentify turkeys. Judges misidentify the law. Both operate under uncertainty. The decisions that emerge from that uncertainty often stay in the trial courts, never entering the bodies of published case law on which we rely. This is partly a problem of numbers. Appellate rulings represent only a small fraction of all legal proceedings. As such, they fail to capture information about the cases most representative of our legal system—the thousands of cases that move through our trial courts every single day.
Since most cases never make it to appeal, we rarely get to see how trial court judges think about specific legal issues, how they actually apply the law in real time. This leaves legal practitioners with a selective visibility: we can see doctrine, but not the process that creates it. So, then, let’s consider two case studies of turkey hunting lawsuits to help us understand liability at the trial court level in New York. The first case, nearly 16 years old, emerged before the widespread digitization of state trial court records. The second, a more recent case, can be found on Trellis, the largest state trial court intelligence platform.
Case Study 1: When the trial record is missing
Two hunters. One Call. One shot. It was May 31, 2008, in Fulton County, at the very end of turkey season in the Mohawk Valley. Christopher Ackerknecht was shot by Mark Lane, a fellow hunter, during a turkey hunt. The incident occurred after Ackerknecht used a turkey call to lure game. Lane, mistaking the sound for a real turkey, fired a 12-gauge shotgun, striking Ackerknecht with 28 pellets. Ackerknecht suffered permanent injuries, including disfigurement and internal damage, eventually filing a lawsuit against Lane in the Fulton County Court.
The case went to trial, but there’s almost nothing left of it—no filings, no motions, no opinions readily available for us to access. The only easily accessible information about this case comes from two news articles published by the Daily Gazette. According to Jim McGuire, the journalist who reported on the case, Lane’s deposition, which was presented during the trial, quotes him as saying he was certain he observed a tom turkey fanning his tail feathers. McGuire then takes us to a verdict. After two days of deliberations, a jury found Lane 66 percent responsible for the injury, awarding Ackerknecht $25,000.
Two columns of local reporting are the only records of a trial that turned on a single, mistaken shot. The Ackerknecht case illustrates the challenges of legal research at the state trial court level, where the absence of digitized records often leaves journalists to act as local court archivists. Because of McGuire, we know a little something about the causes of action, the material facts, and the jury’s verdict, but these are just highlights, not actionable insights. We need the details. Where do those live?
Case Study 2: A fully traceable trial court case
A decade later, on another morning in May, Michael Pachan was turkey hunting in Lockport alongside his friend, Robert, when he was shot by Scott Brown, another turkey hunter, with a 12-gauge shotgun. Pachan sustained serious bodily injuries and filed a case in the Niagara County Supreme Court. I found this case on Trellis, a searchable archive of state trial court records. I can read through the initial pleadings as well as the dispositive motions, the memoranda of law, the deposition transcripts, and the pre-trial rulings. I can start to gather the granular details.
Unlike the Ackerknecht case, this one lives on in full color. Not only can we reconstruct what happened, but we can also revisit how the court interpreted that moment of (un)certainty before the shot. In his deposition, Pachan recounts the moment things went wrong:
I could see the path take a 90-degree turn. As Rob approached that turn, he came to an immediate stop. And—and I immediately thought, he sees a turkey. So I stopped. And all I had to do was lean forward to get past him. I didn’t take a step forward. I just leaned forward. And, I mean, I probably had the look of surprise … Sure enough, there was a turkey down that path. So Rob took a step back. I took a step back. He slowly turned to me and leaned into my face and goes, I think that’s a turkey decoy. I go, what do you mean? There’s another hunter here? Boom. That’s what happens.
Pachan’s legal team filed a motion for summary judgment. According to Pachan, after he was struck, Brown appeared beside him saying, “I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe that I did that.” His legal team argued that Brown was negligent as a matter of law, as he failed to confirm that the object he shot at, Pachan, was not a turkey.
During his own deposition, Brown confirmed that he shot Pachan. But he also thickens the plot.
And then I looked to the left a little bit and I saw something black. So I started looking at it and I go, that’s a big male turkey all puffed up—or he’s not puffed up. He’s just smart and he’s standing there. He came out onto the edge of the brush and he was standing, like, just inside the brush looking that way. And that’s what I saw. So I sat there for like probably another ten seconds and all of a sudden the black bag—or whatever you want to call it—the turkey—which I thought was the turkey—turned and started to go back in the brush. I pulled up and shot.
…
Well, I saw—I saw the whole thing. I saw the black with the—because turkeys’ heads turn white in the spring. So I saw white, I saw the—the colors. I saw everything.
…
My intention was to shoot the turkey, but it ended up not being a turkey.
Unlike the Ackerknecht case, we can see the questions opposing counsel asks. We can see how they’re ordered, styled, and framed. We can also see how the defense uses their client’s responses to build a resemblance between this case and the Jacobs case, underscoring how both involve defendants who believed they saw male turkeys and fired, only to hit a person. It’s hardly surprising that the judge on record, following the moves of the Fourth Department, was persuaded to deny Pachan’s motion for summary judgment. What is surprising are the things we learn about the players: the strategies they favor, the angles they press hardest, the subtle ways they shape the record to strengthen their narrative. These are the tactics that never make into case law.
Why is trial court data critical for legal research?
Attorneys build their arguments on appellate decisions. These are the published artifacts of law, neatly reasoned and edited for citation. These opinions provide guidance on the laws that should apply and how the courts should interpret them. However, appellate opinions represent only a fraction of the system that produces them.
Every appellate opinion begins life as a trial court case. Most of these cases end quietly, never ascending to the clean air of appellate review. Thus, the sample of cases available for study remains small. The attorneys litigating the Pachan case struck gold with Jacobs v. Kent, an appellate case with uncanny parallels. But what happens when there isn’t a relevant case on appeal? Must we turn to the notes of a local reporter?
Trellis, as the largest state trial court intelligence platform, brings attorneys back into the trial courts, into the actual rooms where the legal system lives and breathes. Here, we get to see the real volume of legal life long before any case makes it into a newspaper or finds itself cited on appeal. In these rooms, next to all of the dispositive motions, the evidentiary exhibits, and the overloaded calendars, the focus isn’t always on how the law should apply. In these rooms, the law isn’t resolved so much as it’s practiced, tested, and decided.
If these hunting accidents teach us anything, let it be that misperception has its consequences. Whether in the brush of the woods or the stacks of case law, it’s easy to mistake what’s visible for what’s representative. So, in the case of fowl play, let’s look beyond the surface of appellate opinions and flashes of color. Let’s study the law and the chase as it actually operates—imperfectly, contingently, and inconsistently.
