Yep. It totally changes your outlook in safety. It has for me.

My one is still edged deeply in my mind and each time I go into the woods...

I was about 14 and was hunting a ridge with my father. I loaded the gun when we got set up on a ridge watching a draw. There was alot of movement early that morning but the last 2 hours, the deer had pretty much all already passed through or laid up. I picked up the gun and was "practicing" holding my cross hairs on things out of boredom. First a cactus, then a bush, then a tree...well, found a fork in the tree and wanted to try to hold it steady on the fork. Then decided to ease the trigger down to see if the crosshairs moved...they didn't until the gun went boom. Scared the crap out of me. I had forgot to engage the safety after bolting it.

After the shot, I put the gun on safety and just slowly put the gun back down. We sat there for what seemed like eternity while I waited to get my lecture. It was probably 10-15 minutes later and Dad looked at me and said, "well, did you hit it?". I answered "yes sir". We sat for about 5 more minutes and he said "well, don't think much will be moving after that. You ready to go?"..."yes sir".

Later that night he asked me about it. We had a short discussion and he made his point. Pretty sure he knew how terrified I was and that the shock of it made an impact. To this day, my finger is constantly checking the safety over and over when a gun is in my hand.

My dad's rifle did that on an elk hunt, only when it happened, he was getting set up to shoot a 5x5.

I was 16 it was dark and she smelled good..............