A 17-year-old hunter in Louisiana was killed over the weekend by an apparent lightning strike, according to officials in Union Parish. Officials say first responders found Colton Gauge Honeycutt, of Monroe, deceased in a deer stand sometime after 8:30 p.m. Saturday. He’d been hunting in the woods near the small community of Weldon, and family members had contacted the sheriff’s office after he failed to return home after dusk.
“Investigators believe Honeycutt was killed by a lightning strike when thunderstorms moved through the area, just before sunset Saturday evening,” the UPSO said in a statement, noting that the incident is still under investigation.
Union Parish Sheriff Dusty Gates told ABC News his office is still awaiting the official autopsy report.
“I’ve been doing this for 50 years — first time I’ve seen anything like this,” Gates told reporters.
Some of Honeycutt’s friends and family say there has been an outpouring of love and support for the young man since his tragic death. Many have taken to social media to share photos and stories of him.
“We are shocked, heart broken, and saddened by this sudden loss,” Colton’s uncle, Craig Honeycutt, wrote in a Facebook post Sunday. “He perished in a very freakish act of nature yesterday while hunting … We humanly [sic] know not why things happen as they do.”
Looking beyond Louisiana, Honeycutt is not the first hunter to be killed by lightning in 2025. The National Lightning Safety Council, which promotes lightning safety education, says the Oct. 18 lightning strike in Union Parish is the fifth lightning-related incident involving hunters in the U.S. in the last two months. It’s unclear, however, if the NLSC was referring to the number of hunters killed by lightning, or the number of incidents where hunters were killed in recent months.
Outdoor Life has already reported on two such incidents this fall. The first involved two elk hunters in southern Colorado, who’d been missing for nearly a week by the time their bodies were found on Sept. 18. The county coroner determined their cause of death as an indirect lightning strike.
Read Next: Lightning Strike Killed the Two Missing Elk Hunters in Colorado, Coroner Says
Another incident occurred just weeks later in Florida. It involved two hunters and their hunting dogs, who officials say were killed by an apparent lightning strike in Highlands County. Officials found the four bodies along a canal near Lake Okeechobee.
There have been an additional 15 lightning fatalities across the country so far in 2025, according to the NLSC.
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