MN Firearms Safety

A hunter north of Two Harbors, Minn., looked through his rifle scope twice Wednesday morning before firing at the deer he thought he saw 180 yards away. Instead, the man mistakenly shot and killed his best friend.

Peter Josie, 45, of Zimmerman, had just left his deer stand and started to walk toward his hunting buddy, who was sitting in a second deer stand about a mile away, according to the Lake County Sheriff's Office.

"The shooter heard some ruffling and he thought he saw some horns," said Vicki Hughes, whose sister Debra was married to Josie. "It's devastating," she said. "I do know that the weather up in Ely, it was snowing really bad. Pete's stand was a mile away. Why he was close by I don't know."

The shooter told police that he thought he saw horns, but they turned out to be the branches of a tree near Josie, Hughes said. The shooting remains under investigation, according to a Lake County Sheriff's Office news release. Josie's relatives say they have been told it was ruled accidental.

The man who shot Josie has not been identified by police. Family members refused to name him, saying they wanted to save him further anguish. Vicki Hughes said the shooter and Josie, a union pipefitter and father of three children, have been friends since junior high school. They hunted deer together for years in northern Minnesota, she said.

"He's not taking this well at all," Vicki Hughes said. "He's pretty emotional."

The shooting underscored the danger of hunting, even for the safest hunters, family members said Thursday night. Josie was wearing a standard blaze-orange jacket and was an experienced hunter.

"They were very careful," said Peter's brother-in-law, Dan Taylor. "This is what's so hard about everything. I've deer hunted for 25 years. Someone who doesn't hunt might think 'How can you guess it's a deer?' It's hard to imagine unless you're a hunter and you're out there all the time."