The abstract of a clever paper from Michael Conlin, Stacy Dickert-Conlin, and John Pepper:

To control the deer population, the Pennsylvania Gaming Commission regulates the gender and age of deer that can be legally harvested. These regulations, however, might have an unintended effect on hunting related accidents by changing the care a hunter takes in firing his rifle -- a moral hazard effect – or changing the composition of hunters. To test if and how these regulations affect accidents, we use a unique panel dataset of hunting accidents in Pennsylvania counties from 1990 to 2005 that allows us to distinguish between accidents related and unrelated to the care a hunter takes in firing his rifle. We find that harvesting restrictions substantially decrease the probability of a related accident but slightly increase the probability of unrelated accidents. While the composition of hunters is likely to affect both types of accidents in a similar manner, the differential effect of these law changes on related and unrelated accidents provides compelling evidence that hunting regulations affect the care hunters take when firing their rifles in a manner consistent with moral hazard. Thus, in the case of deer hunting, we find that regulations restricting the types of deer that can be harvested increase the level of care and thus had a positive safety externality.

RE the title of the post: Of course all hunters aren't rednecks. Lighten up.