The Blood Sport

People ask me how I do it,

And I say there's nothing to it.

You just stand there looking cute,

And when something moves, you shoot.

And there's ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now:

Two game wardens, seven hunters and a cow.

--The Hunting Song, by Tom Lehrer

When satire gets that close to reality, it loses much of its humor. Statistics were still piling up as the 1966 hunting season drew to a close last week, but it already seemed likely to be one of the bloodiest in history. Texas alone reported more than 75 shooting accidents and 24 fatalities; Michigan counted twelve dead, Maine five, Colorado five, Georgia four. "We've had people mistaken for everything from birds to porcupines," complained Michigan's conservation director, and a Texas wildlife official warned: "Sure, it's fun to get out in the woods. But it's also a good idea to wear a helmet."

Or maybe a pair of antlers. Could any one mistake a 13-year-old boy, dressed in a red hat and red jacket and driving a blue and white snowmobile, for a deer? A Minnesota hunter did just that last month and shot the boy dead. In Maine, Edwin Horr, 60, was sitting on a rock, smoking, when he was shot -- in the right knee, left calf and left thigh -- by a myopic marksman who thought that the smoke of Horr's cigarette was the rump of a white-tailed buck.

Perfect Charade. "Intentional discharges" account for 40% of all shooting incidents, according to a study made by British Columbia's fish and game department; the rest are accidental, and 80% of the accidents are "the result of sheer carelessness." A common case is the hunter who drops his loaded rifle to the ground, and bang! -- scratch one hunter. Last fall a nervous Texan tried to club a wounded opossum to death with the butt of his rifle and shot himself in the stomach on the first swing. In October, a Colorado hunter tried to demonstrate a fast draw for the benefit of his buddies, only to discover that his trigger finger was faster than his draw. He drilled a hole right through his foot.

For utter foolishness, nothing quite matches the practical joke that backfired tragically on a 25-year-old Dallas lad last month. While waiting for his three hunting companions to return to their campsite near Llano, Texas, he got a sudden inspiration. He hid in a clump of heavy brush along the trail leading to the camp; when his friends drew alongside, he made snarling noises and shook the bushes violently. The charade worked perfectly. Convinced that they were about to be attacked by a mountain lion, the three hunters opened fire, and killed him on the spot.

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