A New York hunter who mistakenly killed a woman who was out walking her dogs is probably feeling as guilt-ridden as anyone ever has right now. He thought he was shooting a deer, and instead killed an innocent woman.

However, now he has other things to worry about in addition to his guilt. He’s been charged with manslaughter, a felony.

A hunter who shot and killed a woman he mistook for a deer as she went on an evening walk with her dogs has been indicted on manslaughter charges, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation.

…

Jadlowski surrendered himself to police and was arraigned today in Chautauqua County Court on charges including manslaughter in the 2nd degree and hunting after legal hours.

Jadlowski entered a not-guilty plea. Bail was set at $50,000 cash or $100,000 property. He’s due back in court in late January.

The charges carry a potential prison term of five to 15 years, according to a DEC news release.

Jadlowski will likely get his day in court, but he may also be hoping to plea down to a lesser crime. After all, no one wants to spend time in prison on what they believe is an accident.

However, if the facts reported by the media are accurate, this isn’t an accident, this is negligence. After all, he reportedly shot after legal shooting hours, which means it was most likely too dark to correctly identify his target. He broke damn near every rule out there for pulling a trigger as either a hunter or a shooter. He failed all of them based on what we can see.

Now he’ll have to deal with the ramifications of that failure, and that means legal fees.

But on the other side of the coin, there’s a man who did absolutely nothing who is now dealing with the loss of his wife because of this failure.

Yes, it’s hard for me to feel too bad for Jadlowski.

Don’t get me wrong, I do. As a shooter and a hunter, what happened with him was something that always played on my mind every moment I was on the stand. I was terrified of shooting a deer and not seeing the gun in the bushes just beyond him, which is probably why I preferred to hunt on stands on fields rather than in the woods and why I’m really nervous hunting at ground level.

But I can also see where Jadlowski blew it, again based on what we’re hearing from the media, and that makes me just shake my head and sigh.

If you’re hunting, please follow the laws. Yes, they can be annoying, but they’re still the law and failure to follow those laws can cause some problems. As we can see in this incident, those problems aren’t confined to dealing with the game warden, either. Some potential problems involve the loss of human life, which could be enough to make someone give up hunting forever…if they can deal with the legal ramifications first.

So, please be careful.