Every morning I wake up and the first thing I do is log on to DrudgeReport to see what happened while I was sleeping. This morning I saw headlines like:
“Iraq Executes 42 People in Two Days”
“Boy, 15, kills himself over fear of ‘being put on sex offender registry’ for streaking at football game…”
“Ritalin-Snorting Mom Swings Baby Like Baseball Bat…”
“Vampire Cannibal Bites 3-year-old Daughter to Death, Drinks her Blood’…”
What a way to start the day! It reminds me of that song by Stealers Wheel called “Stuck in the Middle with You”:
Trying to make some sense of it all
But I can see it makes no sense at all
Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor
‘Cause I don’t think that I can take anymoreClowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am
Stuck in the middle with you.
Some days I wake up so overwhelmed by all the craziness in this world that I just feel like killing something. So, on those special days, when I feel like I’m going to snap – I do just that.
No, I’m not a vampire or a cannibal or anything crazy like that. I’m just a hunter. I used to bowhunt fanatically until a shoulder injury last year. Now I’m restricted to crossbow, which isn’t all bad. It extends my range and enhances my kill ratio.
I think it’s funny that so many hunters try to sugar coat what we do. It’s like they’re apologizing for the act. They call it “harvesting” wild game. I call it “killing” any animal that tastes good with butter and garlic. Deer hunting is my favorite. White-tailed deer are crafty little devils, and I like to pit my wits against them as often as I can.
I can’t help but laugh when I watch one of those professional hunting shows on television. They’re not real. It’s just a lot of Hollywood fakery and camera angles. In reality, hunters go out there and nine times out of ten we come home with butt-kiss for our efforts. Zip, zero. zilch, nada! (But it does help untie the knots created from all these crazy headlines on DrudgeReport.) These professional hunters will shoot a deer, then have the carcass professionally “posed” for the victory pictures after. They actually clean all the blood off the deer and stick his tongue back in his mouth just to be tasteful. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn they bring in a professional cosmetologist (or a Mortician in this case) to make the deer more aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
Listen, folks, can we take a short hiatus from HollyWeird and just be honest here for a second? Hunting is not clean and pretty and glorious. Take my latest hunt for example.
Last week, I went out behind my mom’s house (she own five acres of woods conveniently located fifty yards from a corn field) and I sat up in a tree stand for three hours waiting for the sun to go down. It was fun, relaxing, and I loved it. At 7:10PM two does walked up to within ten yards of my stand. The closest one looked right up at me and stared. (It was like she could see into my soul. How do they always know I’m there? It’s like this demonic sixth sense they have.) I waited, she took a bound away. I grunted and she stopped and listened. I raised my Excalibur crossbow (330 feet per second) and sent a 150-grain broadhead through her rib cage.
And at that moment, do you really think I felt a sense of joy, jubilation, and triumph over the beast? Do you actually believe I felt a sense of victory over this herbivoric mammal? Am I that barbaric, that primal, that cold and calloused? Yer damn right, I am. I felt all those things and I loved it! Every time I kill a deer I get a rush that drugs can’t touch, and it’s good for me. It keeps me from going off the deep end when I read the news.
In reality, hunters are probably the sanest people on the planet. We’re in touch with the roots of our humanity. We’re honest about our blood lust. In truth, I’ve killed hundreds of times and I’m going to kill again. (Perhaps within a matter of hours.)
Of course, there are always those anal, tied-up-in-knots lunatic PETA people who will call me every name in the book, but I don’t care. Give me your best shot. No matter what you say, I’m still going to kill Bambi. It’s who I am; it’s what I do. And if you don’t like it, you can just b*te me. In fact, I’ll pre-dedicate my next kill to you. In fact, I think you should come and protest my barbarism on my front lawn. I’ll fire up the grill and smoke you out with the scent of burning flesh.
So this is autumn at the Coryell household. We harvest fruits and vegetables. Yesterday we gathered a pick-up truck full of apples and tomorrow we take them to the cider mill to be pressed. Yes, it was a fun time with the fam, but not near as fun as shooting a large mammal in the woods. Life is short, so go for the gusto. Leave a blood trail in the leaves that Stevie Wonder could follow. And when accosted by fanatical, pie-in-the-sky vegans … tell them this: “Life begins and ends with a gut pile.”
Happy hunting!
