A Deadly Error on Lopez Island
A 70-year-old man, a repeat offender in accidental shootings, is critically wounded after being mistaken for a deer in a fern patch.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
James Bolton, aged about 70 years, while hunting deer at Fisherman's Bay, Lopez island, Saturday evening, was mistaken for a deer by Arthur Davis from the opposite side of a fern patch, who shot him through the left shoulder, the ball passing through the lung. His case is pronounced quite serious by Dr. Sloggett, but he may possibly linger for some time. Three years ago this month the victim figured in a similar occurrence, he having mistaken Misses Martha and Etta Blake for deer and shot them, inflicting painful but not serious wounds, from which they soon recovered. Accidents of this kind are altogether too frequent here on the islands where the deer abound in numbers.
“Three years ago this month the victim figured in a similar occurrence, he having mistaken Misses Martha and Etta Blake for deer.”
This morbid account of a hunter being shot just as he had previously shot others captures the rough-and-tumble, often dangerous reality of frontier life on the San Juan Islands. It serves as a grim historical footnote to the history of hunting accidents in the Pacific Northwest.
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