It appears that I am always returning to the adage: Better to remain silent and be thought of as a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. Or as is found in Proverbs 17:28: (Wycliffe Bible) “Also a fool, if he is still, shall be guessed a wise man; and, if he presseth together his lips, he is guessed an understanding man.”
Here I go reading again! I was reading an article online about how one “outdoor writer” stated that hunters can mistake another hunter for game. He expressed it in these terms: “If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it probably will.”
Most disturbing about this piece is there is no differentiating between the actions by every hunter to sift through the hundreds upon thousands of objects his eyes take in in one day of hunting and seeing something and shooting at it or killing it.
This is followed by a bunch of psycho-babble about how the brain will see only what it wants to see and when a hunter is so anxious to see game and shoot it, he or she will pull the trigger on such things as a box of Marlboro cigarettes.
A friend of mine was a Maine Humorist. One of his albums he recorded was titled, “Tall Tales and Damned Lies.” Some of this guy’s claims belong in Joe Perham’s Tall Tales and Damned Lies. The author writes: “That explains why virtually every truly experienced turkey hunter I know has been shot at least once.”
Either this guy knows only a handful of “experienced” turkey hunters who are total, brain-dead idiots, or he lies longer than a bearskin rug. Evidently, he buys into the psycho-babble of whom he quotes in this article who says, “the more experienced the hunter,…the more likely you are to be tricked by your ‘mind’s eye.'”
For crying out loud! Years have been spent to educate hunters in recognizing their targets. In Maine, for example, the hunter is 100% responsible to recognize his or her target BEFORE they pull the trigger. Nothing is foolproof. Mistakes can happen but they are rare. Listening to this guy one is led to believe everyone who hunts gets shot and the more experienced you are at hunting the greater your risk of shooting someone.
Hunters don’t need enemies when they have friends like this.
