Attention: Hunters

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 14
1/04/09
0545

First of all, let me say that I have no problem with hunting. I mean, you won't find ME waking up at the ass crack of dawn, dressing like a traffic pylon and trudging through the freezing woods just to sit on a two-by-four plank nailed in a tree, huddled for hours at a time around a lukewarm theromos of Lipton Cup O' Soup, all for the chance to drag a 300-pound corpse two miles through a foot of snow. Thanks, but no thanks.

But if you guys want to do it? By all means. Especially if it lessens the chance that some jackass leafeater is going to plow into the side of my 1992 Chevy Blazer at two in the morning in the middle of nowhere.

However. If you do actually get a shot at a deer, if you could you hit what you're aiming at and kill it right the first time, that'd be just great.

See this guy?


Majestic, yeah? You know what makes him less majestic? The terrible limp he's packing because some yahoo in bright orange camo failed to make the kill and instead just plugged the otherwise beautiful buck right above his rear passenger-side knee. Now when he shows up in my yard for some nightly corn dinner, instead of marveling at his sheer beauty, I have to just wonder if he could take Joe Paterno in a footrace.

I also get visits from this fella:


He's a little less majestic than the first, mostly because the fist-sized exit wound in his thigh has him so gimpy, he makes Verbal Kint look like Prefontaine. He's so slow, he can't seem to chase down simple forest vegetation so he shows up ON MY PORCH begging for handouts. God damn, couldn't you have just killed the poor bastard?

I enjoy watching my deer in the evenings. The way they interact, their clumsy grace, it's nature at its best. What I don't like watching is handicapped deer. There's nothing sadder than a deer with a limp. I mean, they're already so nervous that their main defense is throwing the tail in the air. They literally wave the white flag in the face of danger. All they have is their wheels, and when you take those away, you might as well paint 'Coyote Bait' on their asses. And I have at least TWO gimpy bucks visiting my yard. Jesus F. Christ, just KILL the fuckers, would you? They'd certainly look better beheaded and mounted above your Toby Keith shot glass collection than they do hobbling around my backyard.

Like I said, I have no problem with hunting. The herd of Chevette-trashers has to be thinned, for their own sake. But either I have a serial wounder bumping around my woods, or just a bunch of untrained amateurs out there firing wildly at anything earth-toned. Neither thought gives me a whole helluva lot of comfort. It just gives me sad looking deer and the desire to strap on Kevlar kneepads every time I venture near the woods.