Perry Price, 46, had just shot a goose and went back to his pickup truck to let his dog out to go find it in the bush.
He leaned over the bed of the truck and lay his shotgun down inside as he unhooked the tailgate, his hunting companion told investigators.
"When the dog got to jumping around it went off," deputy Nacheal Bonin of the Chambers County Sheriff's Department told AFP.
The shotgun pellets went through the truck's tailgate and struck Price, a high school teacher and avid hunter, in the thigh.
His friend rushed Price to a hospital just a few miles away but the pellets had severed an artery and Price could not be saved.
"It just caught him in the wrong area. It's a freak accident," Bonin said.
