HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania property owners who allow hunting on their land are now shielded from lawsuits over accidents involving victims off the property, under a bill that Gov. Ed Rendell has signed into law.

Landowners who allow the free use of their property for recreational activities — such as hunting, fishing, swimming and hiking — have been protected from liability for accidents for more than four decades.

The bill Rendell signed Saturday, prompted by a bizarre hunting accident in Lehigh County in 2004, extends that protection for hunting even when the victim is in a distant location.

The revision to the Recreational Use of Land and Water Act, which was approved unanimously by both houses of the Legislature, was developed after a Lehigh County orchardist was successfully sued for the shooting of a pregnant woman by a man who was deer hunting on the farmland.

Casey Burns was 18 years old in November 2004 when she was accidentally shot in the head by a hunter who was more than a half-mile away.

Burns' skull was fractured and the gunshot left bullet fragments and bone in her brain.

A Lehigh County jury later ruled hunter Craig Wetzel was 90 percent negligent. The property owner who gave Wetzel permission to hunt, Daniel Haas, was deemed 10 percent negligent. Burns settled the lawsuit on undisclosed terms.