PORTER – The blood sport of hunting once spilled the blood of William Day Sr., the Day family patriarch.

“Yes, my left leg was blowed up,” says Day.

It happened in 1952, while he and a friend were helping others guide a party of deer-hunting sports from Connecticut or New Jersey or some other place from away, explained his brother, Russ Day.

One of the sports, anxious to get off a quick shot should he sight a whitetail, didn’t keep his rifle safety set. When he tripped over some barbed wire, his finger pulled the trigger, sending a round in the upper portion of William Day’s leg.

The bullet shattered, and the medical practices of the time weren’t up to removing the several pieces of lead that threatened an artery.

William Day ended up spending a year in a cast to keep him immobile while his body slowly built up deposits around the bullet fragments to the point where surgeons could safely remove them.

Now, 72, William still limps as he walks, a constant reminder of the shooting.

“That’s why we always practice safe hunting,” says Russ Day. “Tell everyone to hunt safely.”

Day calls Maine’s requirement that hunters wear fluorescent orange “the best thing that ever happened in this state.”