Last Updated on October 29, 2009 by James Dziezynski
Ever since Dick Cheney mistook his longtime friend’s face for a 450-lb elk, I’ve been enamoured with hunting accidents. There is something beautiful when a coward blows off his own foot while trying to slaughter a timid, gentle woodland creature. Your dog stepped on your rifle and blasted a pack of shotgun pellets through your pelvis? Comedy gold!
With that in mind, I get a little bit giddy when I encounter hunters out in Colorado’s wilderness during our brief hunting season. I love giving bad information, disrupting hunts and generally pissing off grown men who cover themselves in deer urine. I even bought a camouflage hat so that I might look the part a bit more. See, you can’t screw up hunters, simple minded as they are, if you look like you just got back from following Phish across the country. No, no, no. You HAVE to look and act the part. Grow a mustache. Talk with a drawl. Drop F-bombs with abandon. Listen to conservative talk radio to drop your IQ 50 points. Lots of American flag apparel. You get the picture.
The early snows we’ve had in Colorado have been great because nothing deters hunters more than an ACTUAL challenge (as opposed to the fictional challenge of the “sport” of hunting). If these people wanted to be rugged and manly, they’d climb mountains, run rivers, jump motorcycles, those sorts of things. In the past, I’ve gotten mountain goat hunters stuck in a swamp, scared away countless deer that were lined up for the kill while “geocaching”, given endless bad directions, pointed out wrong locations on maps, had LOUD mock arguments with my (sometimes) surprised hiking parters to scare off critters and set up camp 10 feet from hunters’ tree platforms.
As I get older, I want to think of more creative ways to ruin hunters’ days. I’d love to get a full ranger get-up and demand permits that don’t exist, but that’s pushing the spirit of deception a bit. A few ideas that would be fun: mocking up a coat hanger to look like a tracking antenna and “tracking” a “rare breed of wolverine”, which of course would go right between hunter and prey. Getting a reasonably large group of friends together and look like an official “search party” for a “missing cub scout” — who knows, maybe the hunter would put down the gun and join in the search for little Johnny! Or why not the “brilliant palentologist” who found a recent fossil right on this very mountain, and must chisel away (IE bang a metal pan with a hammer) to uncover more specimens.
As much fun as it would be as to go the crazy Earth-First! route of slashing tires (I was hunting the Michelin Man) I still prefer a non-violent, creative approach. Look, if they were smart and savvy they wouldn’t be hunters. And yes, tricking them isn’t particularly challenging (like hunting!) but it is satisfying. Every once in a while you’ll get lucky but in the meantime, will there still be 34-year old men mistaking their fathers for turkeys?
We can only hope.
