Ah, welcome back from a long holiday faithful reader (I say reader because I assume there’s only one person who hits this site consistently). With all the Thanksgiving merriment however, one less important holiday may have been overlooked. Overlooked by those of us with sense, but not by those of us who like venison. Yes, sports fans, I am talking about Deer Day.
Or, if you want to give it a more realistic name, "It Really Sucks to be a Deer" Day. Why? Because for those of you who don’t hunt often, the Monday after Thanksgiving is the day that deer season begins. Thus beginneth the "sport" we call deer hunting.
Luckily for me, I was sick on deer day, so I didn’t celebrate it. No, I wouldn’t have celebrated it even if I had been well, but this way I have an excuse.
Before I continue on with this article, however, I would like to explain exactly what deer hunting entails.
Deer Hunting How To:
Deer hunting involves a number of things, which I will now list:
(1) a gun
(2) a forest or field or something
(3) beer (optional)
(4) patience or a rather slow mind
You take the gun out to the middle of the forest or field. You then drink the beer. Hopefully you brought a lot of the beer, because the beer and the slow mind must keep you amused until some unlucky deer wanders too close to where you are drinking. Then you take the gun and shoot it and it dies. How sporting.
Yes, you heard me, sporting. People dub this off as a sport. Schools get off for this day, so kids can go out and shoot deer with their parents. People everywhere take days off just to kill innocent little deer.
Don’t get me wrong, I am certainly not a deer lover. I used to live right near Gettysburg, PA. There are 2 interesting facts about Gettysburg, PA. One is that it was one of the last battles in the war between the states. The other is that the deer to human ratio is about 7:1. And is still don’t advocate deer hunting.
Let me let you all in on what has eluded these people for a very long time. Shooting a deer with a gun is not a sport, its murder. It’s not really very sportsman like to shoot something. Let me make it a little more clear to you, with this example.
I am sitting at a bus stop. John walks innocently by. He looks at me, with that look that people get. You know, scared, but so scared that he wont run. I whip out my revolver and cap him in the chest. The police come by, and arrest me. I explain that I was just playing a sport and they release me to kill again. Sounds fair, doesn’t it?
Maybe it would be a sport if the deer had a gun, too. Like, if you had to worry about deer snipering you as you tried to do the same to their fellow deer. This would even the playing table a bit, don’t you think?
Or if you had to wrestle the deer to death with like a knife, or better yet, your bare hands. Now that is hunting, and it is also sporting. It gives the deer themselves an even chance of winning and killing you and putting your head up on their wall.
Anyway, the only salient point I’ve made thus far, is you shouldn’t get off a day of school so you can go kill defenseless animals. This is also probably the only salient point I will make at all, but I will continue to rant, mainly for my own amusement.
Some deer hunters may argue my points, however with comments like these:
Going out to kill deer may place children in a less violent environment than most public schools
Well, if they don’t develop a killer instinct when they are young, how will they ever survive in the real world?
They need to work on their aim for drive-by's in the future
These are good points for today’s schools, but I still must respond that deer hunting is not a sport. Its just shooting to kill. And if shooting to kill is a sport, then I will one day be the worlds greatest athlete.
--Scuba Steve, November 28, 2000
(special thanks to Mark Murphy for whining about deer with me)
(special thanks to Katharine Coffman)