SUMNER – A 25-year-old man shot himself in the right foot with a 22-caliber handgun Thursday afternoon while target practicing with his brother deep in the woods.

“The kid had five or six rounds in his gun. He was fidgeting with the hammer and said, ‘Oh crap, I almost shot myself in the foot.’ He then realized he had,” Oxford County Deputy William Nelson said.

Jerry Irons of French Street in Sumner was 3.5 miles out in the woods at a makeshift shooting range off the River Road with his brother Allen, 21, when the accident occurred about 2 p.m.

Allen Irons ran the distance out of the woods in about 30 minutes to call for help while his brother stayed in the woods, Nelson said.

“He wasn’t bleeding too bad. The bullet stopped in his shoe,” said Nelson, who went to the scene. “When he took his shoe off the bullet fell out. It wasn’t a big hole but he was more concerned about how much of an idiot he would look like.”

Nelson said the man was lucky considering he was in a deeply rural area with no communication available. “It wasn’t real smart of them. It left them kind of stranded,” Nelson said.

Tri-Town Ambulance Service of West Paris took Irons to Stephens Memorial Hospital where he was treated and released.