Early Thanksgiving morning, Gabe Robinson was hunting white tailed deer in rural Montana. It was a quiet hunting spot he’d visited a hundred times before without any incidents. That was about to change. 

The morning started out uneventful. He parked his truck on the side of the road and hiked a short distance out with nothing but his rifle. Not long after, he sees a doe. Gabe shoots the deer, which then hops a fence onto private land. Like any good hunter, he racks another round in case he needs a follow-up shot. Once he realizes the deer had died, Gabe flicks his safety on and removes the magazine. 

After he finds blood, he hikes back to his truck. However, to reach his truck, he has to duck under a barbed wire fence. The top and bottom strands of the fence were intact, but the middle one had been cut. While he’s squeezing through the fence, his rifle gets tangled in the loose strand of barbed wire. Gabe unshoulders his rifle to try to pull it out of the fence. While he was attempting to free his rifle, the barbed wire pulled his gun downwards and managed to turn the safety off.

Gabe remembers, “I heard a click and a boom” as the rifle suddenly fired. Immediately dropping the gun, he scans the ground, searching for an explosion of dirt. What he sees instead is a pencil-sized hole in his boot. His first thought was ‘Holy s***, I just shot myself.” His second thought was that he needed to get to his truck and control the bleeding. 

Luckily, he couldn’t feel the pain yet due to the adrenaline pumping through him, so he takes off at a sprint for his truck. Unluckily, the adrenaline wore off on the very last step. The pain flared up, and Gabe’s foot caved under him, smashing his face into the passenger side door. Unable to feel the pain in his face due to the absolute agony that was his foot, Gabe scrambles up, throws the door open, and tears apart his first aid kit looking for a tourniquet. 

Unable to find the tourniquet quickly enough, he fashions a makeshift tourniquet out of some paracord and calls 911. A short while later, he found his actual tourniquet and tightened that down on his leg until the tourniquet hurt more than the gunshot wound did. At that moment, he knew he wasn’t going to die, but he was terrified he was going to lose his foot. 

The 911 operator told him it would take a while for an ambulance to arrive, so she wanted him to get into the truck and elevate his foot. So, he tells the operator that it’s going to be silent for a minute, chucks the phone into the backseat of his truck, and hobbles into the car. He then rolls down the back window, props his foot on it, and lays the phone down on his chest. 

Gabe later said, “I vividly remember…coming in and out of consciousness, and the operator was telling me about the Macy’s day parade because I’d never heard of that.’ She also told him about what her family normally does on Thanksgiving Day in an attempt to keep Gabe alert. She remained on the phone with him until the police finally arrived 35-40 minutes later. 

Upon their arrival, one of the police officers found his rifles, took the round out of the chamber, handed it to Gabe, and told him, “Here. Something to remember today by.” Not long after, EMS arrived and loaded him into the ambulance. They then twisted the tourniquet one more time, and Gabe genuinely thought his bone was going to snap.

On the way to the hospital, the paramedic cut off his boot to inspect the wound. When they did so, he sat up because he wanted to see what the damage was. As soon as Gabe saw his foot, he immediately became lightheaded and thought he was going to pass out or throw up. However, that passed once they gave him pain medication. 

Later, he called his parents, girlfriend, and finally his boss to fill them in on what had happened. When on the phone with his boss, he told him, “I shot myself in the foot. I’m not going to be at work tomorrow.” At first, his boss thought Gabe was speaking figuratively and asked what happened. When Gabe said that he literally shot himself in the foot, his boss laughed and told him to get better.

From this experience, Gabe has learned that it is critical that you are sure your firearm is completely unloaded when not in use and that you are ultimately the first responder in an emergency. He has also realized that not only do you need to have the right equipment in hand, you also need to know where everything is. 

As of today, Gabe is completely recovered. He can walk, run, jump, lift, and do everything he loves without any issue. And luckily, this experience didn’t ruin Gabe’s love for the outdoors because he is ecstatic for this upcoming hunting season!