A 75-year-old Jim Thorpe man suffered nonlife threatening injuries after he was shot by another hunter while they were hunting Saturday morning in Towamensing Township.

The incident occurred at 10:45 a.m. along the north shore of Beltzville Lake near Pohopoco Drive, according to William Williams, information and education supervisor at the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s Northeast region Office in Dallas.

“They were hunting pheasants, and there was a group of four individuals that went out that morning and they were in a field that was a very brushy area,” Williams said. “A pheasant came in between two of them and a shot was fired, and one of the individuals took a couple of pellets to the leg.”

Williams said luckily there was a deputy game warden on scene, and they were able to walk the hunter to the vehicle, where an ambulance arrived to take him to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.

A member of his hunting party, a 60-year-old man from Sellersville, fired the shot, Williams said.

The man had non-life threatening injuries to his lower leg and calf area, Williams said.

He said a Deputy Game warden was on scene almost immediately. Shortly thereafter, Williams said the Carbon County game warden, along with another deputy and one of the game commission’s supervisors who was in the area also assisted.

The shot was fired from about 20 yards.

He said all of this hunting party were wearing the appropriate amount of fluorescent orange material.

Williams said no charges have filed at this point, adding that anytime there’s an incident that involves a hunter being shot or injured in some way, it is the game commission’s responsibility to conduct an investigation.

“One of the primary reasons is we want them documented, and we want to look at what went wrong,” he said. “In this case, it was a line of fire (where) the pheasant was between one hunter and another shooter.”

Williams cautioned that it’s always important to make sure hunters know who is on either side of them and what their location is, and that it should be 100% safe.

“Fortunately, we don’t get many of these; we’d like to get zero,” Williams said. “Unfortunately, this one did happen, and hopefully it will be a learning experience.”