diff --git a/pyshex/utils/schema_loader.py b/pyshex/utils/schema_loader.py
index 544eb13..4d57669 100644
--- a/pyshex/utils/schema_loader.py
+++ b/pyshex/utils/schema_loader.py
@@ -1,4 +1,3 @@
-import codecs
 import os
 import re
 from pathlib import PureWindowsPath
@@ -23,10 +22,11 @@ def _base_uri(loc: str | None) -> str | None:
 
 
 def load_shex_file(shexfilename: str) -> str:
-    """ Read a ShEx file or URL, honoring a UTF-8 BOM and otherwise guessing the encoding.
+    """ Read a ShEx file or URL as UTF-8 (honoring a BOM), guessing the encoding only if that fails.
 
-    Same as pyshexc.parser_impl.generate_shexj.load_shex_file, except that it falls back to
-    UTF-8 when chardet (>= 7) reports no encoding, instead of crashing in bytes.decode(None).
+    ShExC is UTF-8 by definition, so chardet is a fallback for non-conforming files rather than
+    the first resort: it samples only the start of the data, and reports ascii with confidence 1.0
+    for a large file whose first non-ASCII character comes later (e.g. FHIR R4's fhir.shex).
     """
     if '://' in shexfilename:
         with request.urlopen(shexfilename) as response:
@@ -34,11 +34,15 @@ def load_shex_file(shexfilename: str) -> str:
     else:
         with open(shexfilename, 'rb') as inf:
             data = inf.read()
-    if data.startswith(codecs.BOM_UTF8):
-        return data.decode('utf-8-sig')
-    result = chardet.detect(data)
-    encoding = result['encoding'] if result['encoding'] and float(result['confidence'] or 0) > 0.9 else 'UTF-8'
-    return data.decode(encoding)
+    try:
+        return data.decode('utf-8-sig')         # also strips a UTF-8 BOM if present
+    except UnicodeDecodeError:
+        pass
+    encoding = chardet.detect(data)['encoding']
+    try:
+        return data.decode(encoding or 'latin-1')
+    except (UnicodeDecodeError, LookupError):
+        return data.decode('latin-1')           # maps every byte, so never fails
 
 
 # ShExJ members holding IRIs that are resolved against the document base.  Imports are
diff --git a/tests/test_pyshex_utils/test_schema_loader.py b/tests/test_pyshex_utils/test_schema_loader.py
index fef35e4..650fa1c 100644
--- a/tests/test_pyshex_utils/test_schema_loader.py
+++ b/tests/test_pyshex_utils/test_schema_loader.py
@@ -1,8 +1,9 @@
+import codecs
 import os
 
 from rdflib import RDF
 
-from pyshex.utils.schema_loader import SchemaLoader
+from pyshex.utils.schema_loader import SchemaLoader, load_shex_file
 
 
 SCHEMAS_DIR = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), '..', 'data', 'schemas'))
@@ -100,4 +101,34 @@ def test_format_change() -> None:
     loader.schema_format = 'shex'
     assert loader.location_rewrite(f"{loc}.shex") == f"{loc}.shex"
     assert loader.location_rewrite(f"{loc}.shextern") == f"{loc}.shextern"
-    assert loader.location_rewrite(f"{loc}.jsontern") == f"{loc}.shextern"
\ No newline at end of file
+    assert loader.location_rewrite(f"{loc}.jsontern") == f"{loc}.shextern"
+
+
+# A UTF-8 character after ~300KB of ASCII: chardet only samples the start and reports
+# ascii with confidence 1.0 (as it does for FHIR R4's fhir.shex), which used to crash decode()
+CAFE_SHEXC = '<http://a.example/S1> { <http://a.example/p1> ["caf\u00e9"] }\n'
+
+
+def test_load_shexc_utf8_after_long_ascii_prefix(tmp_path) -> None:
+    shex_file = tmp_path / 'long.shex'
+    shex_file.write_bytes(('# padding line for chardet\n' * 12000 + CAFE_SHEXC).encode('utf-8'))
+    assert load_shex_file(str(shex_file)).endswith(CAFE_SHEXC)
+    schema = SchemaLoader().load(str(shex_file))
+    assert schema.shapes[0].expression.valueExpr.values[0].value == 'caf\u00e9'
+
+
+def test_load_shexc_non_utf8_falls_back(tmp_path) -> None:
+    """ShExC must be UTF-8, but a Latin-1 file still loads rather than crashing.
+    Which 8-bit encoding chardet guesses for so short a sample varies, so only the ASCII is checked."""
+    shex_file = tmp_path / 'latin1.shex'
+    shex_file.write_bytes(CAFE_SHEXC.encode('latin-1'))
+    text = load_shex_file(str(shex_file))
+    assert len(text) == len(CAFE_SHEXC)
+    e_acute = CAFE_SHEXC.index('é')
+    assert text[:e_acute] + 'é' + text[e_acute + 1:] == CAFE_SHEXC
+
+
+def test_load_shexc_utf8_bom(tmp_path) -> None:
+    shex_file = tmp_path / 'bom.shex'
+    shex_file.write_bytes(codecs.BOM_UTF8 + CAFE_SHEXC.encode('utf-8'))
+    assert load_shex_file(str(shex_file)) == CAFE_SHEXC