The sport of hunting

A radio show I was half listening to had someone make a comment along the lines of "Hunting is not really my thing. It isn't too sporting...maybe when someone gives a gun to deer it will be more sporting..."

Wow, I thought, what a fabulous idea! So I set out to do it. After all, as we all know, it is guns that kill people so giving a gun to deer is a great way to even the odds against the hunters. In fact, with their superior speed, agility, and sense of smell it might even give the deer an advantage. Perhaps one day soon we will all kneel at the feet...err, hooves of our deer overlords. We shall exist solely to plant rose gardens for their chewing pleasure.

So I headed out to the nearest gun shop to purchase one...maybe a 30-.06, those are pretty popular. Decent power, good range, easy to find ammo for. Of course, nowadays you have to wait a few days before purchasing a gun. I was told the wait would be even longer after I told them the intent of the purchase.

What kind of stupid question is that, anyway..."purpose of purchase?" Uh, hello, it's a gun...I want to shoot something. What did you think I was going to say? "Uh, yeah, I need a new walking stick so the most economical, serviceable thing I could think of was a gun." My best guess is that pretty much anyone trying to purchase a working firearm intends to, whether at a stationary, non-living or a moving, living version, fire at a target. And the odds say it is a pretty good guess.

Of course, you get the occasional individual who simply wants to display it or, in my case, give it to a deer, but for the most part, people purchasing a gun want to shoot stuff. In fact, the percentage is so high I think you can discount that question all together. One would like to think nobody would be stupid enough to answer stuff like, "Oh, to shoot my husband." or "to perform terrorist actions" or "to defend myself during an impending drug deal" or "Oh, I need to do a drive-by shooting." Let's face it, anyone more sophisticated than Barney the Dinosaur will have a plausible reason so asking it just wastes all out time and irritates us.

Well, once I got the gun and ammo, I headed out into the forest to find Bambi, give him a gun and turn him into Bambo, deer drawer of first blood, and see how the hunters like it now. And here I ran into my second problem.

Seems deer tend to run away when they see people. So it was hard to get close enough to give one a gun unless I shot it first which, it turns out, sort of defeats the purpose. A dead deer with a gun is not much more difficult to deal with than a dead deer without one.

Fortunately, I am not one to give up easily so I worked on my stalking skills until I was able to approach a living deer. I gave him the gun. I waited to see what would happen.

And the answer is....




not much. You see, he has no opposable thumbs. No forefinger. No means of pulling the trigger. So there you have it. Giving guns to deer does not really make it any more sporting. Either hunting is fine as is or it isn't but giving guns to deer doesn't really help them out. Sorry about that.