An 8-year-old-boy who recently completed a school project on hunting with his father died Saturday after being shot by his father while hunting turkey in Minnesota.

Sibley County Sheriff Bruce Ponath said that Anthony Klaseus, of Belle Plaine, and his son Hunter were hunting turkey about three miles west of Belle Plaine Saturday evening when Klaseus shot his son in the chest with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Belle Plaine is about 45 miles southwest of Minneapolis.

Klaseus dialed 911 on his cell phone and carried the boy to a rendezvous with emergency responders, Ponath said. But the boy was pronounced dead at the scene.

"He was absolutely panicked. That would be an understatement," Ponath told The Associated Press.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Hunter, dressed in camouflage, was 20 to 30 yards away from his father when his father mistook him for a turkey and fired his gun.

The shooting remains under investigation, but the sheriff characterized it as a tragic accident.

"A lot of people are in shock. It just doesn't seem possible," Pat Pribyl, the principal at Raven Stream Elementary School in New Prague, where Hunter was a third-grader, told the Star Tribune.

Pribyl described the boy as a wrestler and an active and eager student who had recently written and illustrated a book for a class about hunting with his father.