I quit hunting public lands in New York after I saw a guy using a loaded gun as a crutch coming up out of a ravine and then attempting to blow the dirt out of the end of the barrel while the gun was still loaded. He then proceeded to resume hunting without even checking the barrel.
You sure he wasn't from Maine....
I know a guy here in Maine who blew off half his right hand. Of course, his story is a little more involved. He was hare hunting, alone, on snowshoes, a mile or two from the truck, and went in well over his head in the snow (five feet or so of the white stuff) atop a beaver pond (looked like a clearing in the forest). And he used the gun to push off what he thought was solid ground but turned out to be a log under all that snow, whereupon it went off. He managed to apply a tourniquet (not easy with only one hand), struggle out of the beaver pond, snowshoe all the way back to the truck (carrying the gun), collect his dogs, get in the truck and drive 20 or so miles to the nearest town. I'm not sure whether he dragged in the three hares he'd already shot, too. Then, he had to be driven in an ambulance (the helicopter was unavailable) all the way to Bangor - well over 100 miles but the closest trauma center - to get the appropriate surgery. And he's a diabetic who had to worry about glucose levels during all this. He told me the wardens who investigated were convinced no one could have bled that much and lived, but live he did.
The gun, BTW, was a fluid steel hammer double. So Damascus had nothing to do with it and putting his hand over a loaded barrel's muzzle had everything to do with it. (Another reason I'm prejudiced against hammerguns - no safety.)
I don't own a Damascus gun and have never shot one, but I wouldn't outright refuse to shoot one assuming I could be sure it had sound barrels and the loads were low pressure.
