Originally published October 15, 1981
The Hills are alive with whistling bulletry and gut-shot camo-fashionistas.
Whether you limit your hunting activity to plinking gophers and rabbits or expand your horizon to stalk the dreaded Prairie Musk Ox, best practice would require disregarding the following guide and staying home until the shooting stops.
Never underestimate the intelligence of any animal. With the exception of the human, most animals know when hunting season begins and ends. They prepare for it well in advance.
Upon approaching a supposedly dead animal, a hunter should always use extreme caution. Many an unsuspecting marginal-game hunter has harnessed up his/her “kill,” only to have the clever animal recover to drag him/her mercilessly and pleasurably through forest, field, and stream. Survivors of such trauma have often reported the eerie, rare, post-event sound of deer tittering.
Every outdoor enthusiast has heard “The Deer Stand,” a hunting horror tale that occurred one autumn morning when a bored young hunter, high in his forest perch, desecrated the precious silence with a violent nose blow. In concert, he passed resounding gas and encored with an involuntary belch. The ensuing vibrations and awkward stances collapsed the stand to ground level, where several answering beasts leapt from the underbrush to stomp the former predator within an inch of his deformed rifle barrel.
More resourceful and forward-thinking outdoorsmen have access to resources such as Gibbon’s #69 Doe-in-Rut Buck Lure, which has proven to have unwanted effects on normally docile ranch stock. To avoid mauling, goring, or other barnyard penetration, use caution when transporting this product to the field of fire.
The danger doesn’t end when victorious hunters leave the pitch. The Duck Plucker, a seemingly harmless cylindrical device of un-threatening diameter, studded with dull metal points and inserted into a drill chuck, can strip a fowl carcass bare in seconds. Users beware that the Plucker performs with similar remorselessness on human flesh, bone, and organs when used with impropriety. Dumb pluckers should avoid this machine.
The pastime of hunting can involve a certain amount of danger, but if each and every participant follows the conscientious practices that they claim to have been taught, the sport can be safe and enjoyable, until water runs into one’s waders and causes one’s shotgun to misfire indiscriminately within the confines of the blind.
Whether one’s hunting pleasure consists of beating geese out of the sky with clubs on a foggy day, shooting the windshields out of moving motor homes, or bagging ducklings Arkansas-style, always keep in mind that your price per pound toggles from ridiculous to unaffordable upon admission to the emergency room.