Deer hunting in town just isn't going to work
Lou Marzeles
News Editor
OK, there’s no question about it: I’m the reverse of a hick. A hick, you will recall, is what they call you in the city if you’re from the country. I’m not sure exactly what they call you in the country if you’re from the city, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard a wide range of suitable terms while I’ve been busy entertaining people around here with my astonishing ignorance of country life.
I can count my life reasonably complete now that I’ve learned of carnivorous squirrels. I don’t know what’s taking Hollywood so long to produce a horror movie about them. And now I’m told of mutant carnivorous turkeys. Remind me again about how scary the city is.
But even my reverse hickitude, to coin a term, could not prepare me for the conversation that arose at last week’s Java Talk, about the idea of hunting deer with bows and arrows within the city limits. Chalking it up to my naivity, I was surprised at how surprised I was that people spoke of the idea seriously. (I hasten to add that I mean no offense to the serious people.)
But in a recent conversation with Police Chief Rick Johnson about the plan, my initial sense of how unworkable the idea seemed felt corroborated. “It’s not something we can remotely do,” Rick told me. “Now, I’m all for hunting. But we just don’t have the room in town to do this. You shoot a deer, it doesn’t just fall there dead. It runs off to little Mary’s house, and then where are you? Say it runs off to the school yard; what then? A bow can have a lethal range of 70 to 80 yards. We don’t have that kind of range. I just don’t think it’s a good idea, and besides, there are a lot of people who love the deer.”
Whew. I thought it was just me. In a place where there are mutant meat-eating turkeys from Mars (OK, I made that last part up), who’d know? I’m fond of the person who brought up this idea, but it just doesn’t really seem to have real prospects ahead of it.
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