I wonder if he used the new Hee-Haw call?

www.chron.com/cs/CDA/rssstory.mpl/sports/3409369

Oct. 22, 2005, 10:34PM

Loaded weapon, empty head don't mix
If you can't tell deer from donkey, stay out of woods
By DOUG PIKE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Every time I dare dream that recreational hunting has rid its ranks of the unethical and uneducated, another nincompoop proves me wrong. Eventually, with patience, persistence, and when necessary, prosecution, we'll weed them out.

The latest entry to the list of people undeserving of the privilege is a New York hunter, as reported by Rick Miller in the Olean Times Herald this week, who mistook a 400-pound donkey for a white-tailed deer on opening day of the Empire State's archery season. It should come as no surprise that the hunter was charged with multiple violations once law enforcement officers wrapped their investigation.

Even in New York, where whitetails grow thicker and fatter to insulate themselves from the region's harsh winters, deer don't look much like donkeys. Apparently, however, whitetails and other not-so-similar, four-legged animals there occasionally are arrowed by knuckleheads.

How this sort of thing can happen should boggle the mind of any clear-thinking, sober adult, hunter or not. Unless you never have seen either animal, not even in pictures, distinguishing between the two should be relatively simple.

Hunters' misidentifications of their targets are not altogether uncommon. This past year, somewhere other than Texas although the precise location eludes me, another man who believed he was shooting at a deer dropped someone's pet llama.

An old campfire joke tells of a city-slicker hunter arguing with a cowboy over who gets the big deer shot dead by the greenhorn. The cowboy finally tells the dude, "You can have the deer, but let me get my saddle off it first"

It's bad enough when an inexperienced or careless hunter shoots the wrong animal, even worse on those rare occasions in which a person looks through a scope or over open sights and somehow sees wildlife when what's really down the barrel is another person.


Deadly accident
In the early 1970s, two high school acquaintances on an unsupervised "safari" chased a javelina into thick South Texas brush. When one of them saw movement and heard rustling across the tangles of mesquite and XXXXXly pear, he touched off a high-powered round. What the bullet struck was his friend.

With maturity, I find it increasingly difficult to call such devastating events accidents. An unforeseeable ricochet might result in an accident. A mechanical malfunction of a firearm or bow might cause an accident. When a hunter aims a loaded gun, fires it and strikes the intended target, that's no accident.

Varying degrees of impatience and inexperience (often with a dash of ignorance) usually are involved in such tragedies, and there's no way to "unring" the bell once a trigger is pulled.

Unlike hitting a curveball or playing a musical instrument, learning from mistakes isn't much of an option with gun safety, at least not without potentially gruesome consequences.

Yet another disturbing incident involving wildlife (but not hunting) ended in conviction this past week in Wisconsin, where three young men, almost certainly not on their way to the local Mensa meeting one night a year ago, deliberately ran down a deer with the driver's car.

According to Sharon Roznik in The Reporter out of Fond du Lac, the teenager behind the wheel and his pals were chasing deer in a field one night in 2004. After they struck a doe, while trying to leave the field, the driver slammed into a ditch and busted his head on the steering wheel.

The cut required six stitches. My guess is that much blood flowed from that wound but no brains fell out.


Getting the word out
As unbelievable as each of these incidents sounds, they really happened. And it's important that they be shared, openly, with hunters and with non-hunters.

The message that should punctuate any retelling of such a story is that ethical, honest hunters do not condone irresponsible behavior toward wildlife and that anyone who exercises such poor judgment, be they licensed hunters or joy-riding teenagers or whatever, is not welcome in the hunting community.

Carelessness and ignorance have no place in the wild, especially behind a loaded firearm or bow. Of that I am certain.