The Corpse Wore Red

As the big-game season spread through the West last week, it was hard to tell, as always, whether it was more dangerous to be a nine-point buck or a stockbroker on a hunting holiday. Items: P: In Colorado's first week, kills of deer were up 41%, elk 12% and hunters 150% (five killed already v. two in the entire two-week season last year). Wearing a bright red shirt and cap, Bernard Tiffany was standing in an open pasture when his companion heard an unseen hunter yell, "Anyone down there?" and shouted back, "No." The hunter fired, and Ti"~any fell with a .30-caliber slug in the neck. P: In Salt Lake City, Edward Allen sat on his front porch to watch his neighbor and friends load up for a deer hunt, was killed when one pressed the trigger of a loaded rifle and shot him through the abdomen. P: In Montana, Donald Marko was wearing a red hat and riding a horse with red-trimmed saddle gear, but he looked like an elk to a hunter 400 yds. away, who shot him down.

As the slaughter went on, hunters could take cold comfort from the fact that killings for the West as a whole were really running about the same as last year, e.g., three in Montana, five in Idaho. But there were scarcely reassured by the Utah sheriff who blandly exonerated a hunter from blame in killing his companion on the ground that the dead man was wearing beige trousers, the color of a deer's hide. The fact that the corpse was also wearing a red hat and red jacket seemed not to figure in the sheriff's assessments.

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