It was the sort of thing that really doesn’t make you angry unless you see it for yourself. Well, I’ve seen it, and now I’m angry. I was half paying attention to some nature program on TV when I looked up to see a pickup truck full of grown men with guns. They were part of a larger hunting party that was “on the trail” of some poor animal. It quickly became clear to me not only that whatever they were tracking — which turned out to be a cougar — was not going to live, but that an Army Ranger couldn’t have escaped these boys.
I’m sure they envisioned themselves as Apaches on horseback out in the Old West, using their finely honed skills to track some creature of the wild. Man against nature and all that. The truth was that there was no more sport in what they were about to do than there is in getting in your car and going to McDonald’s for a bacon double-cheeseburger.
Some New Yorker had gotten himself a hankering to get out in the woods and kill something. So he’d paid a group of good old boys several thousand dollars to find him something to shoot. They’d guaranteed him a kill in seven days or less. Their idea of tracking — driving around in backwoods so criss- crossed with roads an animal couldn’t go half a mile without crossing one and leaving tracks in the snow — had set them on the trail of a big cat. Roads dissected all portions of the forest, so upon determining the general location of the cougar, they decided to fence him in. Staying in constant contact with each other using walkie-talkies, they decided it was time to let the dogs loose. Then they stood around. And waited. They didn’t follow the dogs. They tracked them. Using radio telemetry.
The radio started beeping and off they went. A majestic 120-pound cougar was crouched on an upper limb of a 35-foot tree. Shooting fish in a barrel? They might as well have stapled a mackerel to a bullseye. At least the fish can swim around. The “designated killer” walked over, careful not to get too close. He pulled out a .357 Magnum and shot the cougar once: It faltered. Twice: It fell off the limb and hung there. The third shot loosed the cougar from its perch and it fell to a lower limb — then into the water of the shallow creek below. No more a hunter than a chihuahua is, the gunsel waded over to the animal and plugged it one last time.
Hunting implies sport, chance — as in giving the animal one. Where was the appeal in what they’d done?
The thrill of the chase? What chase? Matching wits with an animal of the wild? These boys had used technologies they no more understood than a TV remote control to locate this animal. Communing with Mother Nature? They only got out of the trucks when they absolutely had to.
The thrill of the kill? Ah, yeah.
This has got me thinking. In this age of technological wonder, why should people have to go out into the woods to kill something? If people need the thrill of the kill, let’s bring it to them. We’ll raise game animals in captivity. At birth, the animals will be implanted with a small explosive device attached to a radio transmitter. Customers will be given a cellular- technology device, which will look much like a television remote control. Without leaving the comfort of his — or her — own home, the customer can kill . . . bears, deer, cougars — eventually we’ll expand into exotic game, such as lions, tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses. One press of a button and they’re a hunter among men.
We’ll raise the animals in stalls like milk cows to save time and money. We’ll grain-feed them and pump them full of antibiotics. Or, if the customer simply has to kill a “wild” animal, we’ll have “free-range” deer, too. They’ll be raised in a natural setting much as their wild counterparts are.
To enhance the experience, customers will get a free video. If they choose to kill a deer, they’ll fast forward to the “Dying Deer” portion of the tape while pressing the “Bye-Bye-Bambi” button on their remote — and they’ll see a real deer being killed in the wild — by real hunters using real guns. . . . What a realistic experience.
We’ll accept Mastercard or VISA right over the phone. We’ll have a webpage – – we’ll even put video footage on CD-ROM. Consumers can subscribe to our service — “twice the kills, double the thrills.” Or, if someone simply develops a sudden uncontrollable urge to kill something, he can call our First-timers’ Hunter Hotline — “One call, one kill.”
I suppose we could arrange to have customers watch live via satellite on direct-feed television as their deer shuddered violently and then dropped dead in its stall — or in its “native habitat” — though the logistics would likely prove this concept infeasible. But, hey, demand may prove otherwise.
And if you’re redefining the term “hunter,” why not go all the way to a drunk guy on a barstool?
