Home › #BlackstoneRiver › TALLY HO! IT’S HUNTING SEASON AGAIN!

TALLY HO! IT’S HUNTING SEASON AGAIN!

By on • ( 23 )

Photographs: Garry Armstrong

I don’t hate hunting season because I cried when hunters killed Bambi’s mother. Though I did cry and I personally can’t shoot things even if I like the way they taste roasted with some rosemary and garlic. No, I hate hunting season because the people with the guns are not nearly careful enough about not shooting near homes and other populated areas.

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Every night between now and the middle of November, I hear the guns. Bang. Bang. Bang. I worry every time my dogs are outside and I continue to worry until they come home and no one has a hole somewhere they shouldn’t.

I always will remember,
’twas a year ago November,
I went out to hunt some deer
On a mornin’ bright and clear.
I went and shot the maximum the game laws would allow,
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.
I was in no mood to trifle,
I took down my trusty rifle
And went out to stalk my prey.
What a haul I made that day.
I tied them to my fender, and I drove them home somehow,
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.
The law was very firm, it
Took away my permit,
The worst punishment I ever endured.
It turned out there was a reason,
Cows were out of season,
And one of the hunters wasn’t insured.
People ask me how I do it,
And I say, “there’s nothin’ to it,
You just stand there lookin’ cute,
And when something moves, you shoot!”
And there’s ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now,
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a pure-bred Guernsey cow.

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I don’t object to hunting on principle, at least not if you eat what you kill. Trophy hunting makes me queasy and killing endangered species should be a felony. But so should polluting the air and water. Let’s be fair. Anyone and everyone who is working industriously to destroy our planet for a few extra bucks or so they can hang a head or antlers on their wall? They need to experience suffering.

Otherwise … if you hunt, aim carefully. Please.

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Categories: #BlackstoneRiver, #Photography, Humor, Music

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23 replies

  1. theweaponedwoman
    11/02/2016 • 16:34

    Hahahaha that song! Omw, it’s hilarious. Thanks for sharing.
    I personally think that if there were a law saying that hunters can’t drink, there’d be a whole lot less reason for innocent people to worry. Specifically because there’d be quite a few less hunters. ;P

    Like

  2. evilsquirrel13
    10/19/2016 • 11:21

    So I shouldn’t wear my Bambi costume to the park on Halloween then…..

    Liked by 2 people

  3. swo8
    10/19/2016 • 10:22

    Great song Marilyn. You don’t want to go out in the woods today.
    Leslie

    Like

    • Marilyn Armstrong
      10/19/2016 • 11:04

      I generally don’t go into the woods. On the rare months when there’s nobody out there looking for a turkey or a pheasant, there are wolf spiders and many things that bite, not to mention blackberry brambles and poison ivy. The only time it’s safe is in the very early spring after the snow has melted, but before the leaves have come back, so there are paths and you can actually see where you are going. I’ve gotten lost back there. Once you are over the ridge, you can’t see anything but trees.

      Liked by 2 people

  4. judyt54
    10/19/2016 • 08:47

    I have little to no patience with the mindset that goes with most hunters around here. if it’s brown, and has four legs, it’s probably a deer. No matter that it barks and is two feet high with a red bandana (which makes it a much better target) to identify it. It must be a deer because i say so.
    We live in the dead center of two hundred acres of woods. posted. conserved. All the signs say so. I still keep close to the house and try not to make deer noises or turkey noises. Directly across from our house is a ridge of land, and if you stand on that you cannot see the house for the trees. but you can by god see a deer, and if you miss you might just wing our car. Or us.

    Folks love to post tree stands on our property, far enough away, they surmise, that we won’t notice. Oh yeah, we do. We pull down at least one or two yearly. some of them directly in line with the No Trespassing signs they had to duck to get there.

    The penalty? they lose their hunters license for a year. wow.

    I have this little fantasy I would love to do–the gun goes off near the house, somewhere in the woods. I rush out the door, screaming, I’VE BEEN SHOT, OMG I’VE BEEN SHOT HELP HELP…help…gurgle…

    Liked by 1 person

    • Marilyn Armstrong
      10/19/2016 • 10:17

      You should do that. Make sure someone films it. It might be a YouTube video and go viral.

      Our property is backed onto about 50 acres of woods. Yes we have deer and lots of turkeys and pheasants. But even more horses and cows. Dogs. people and the occasional llama. They hunt much too close to where we live. And you’re right. It’s NOT funny.

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      • judyt54
        10/19/2016 • 12:55

        every year at least one intrepid hunter brings a very large cow to the weigh station to be weighed and tagged and he is invariably puzzled at how his 6 point buck morphed into this–this–cow…it’s called buck fever, and it’s funny, and scary, all at the same time.
        It used to be worse. They would, my mother in law told me, come up and park in the damn field in front of the house. The rights of ownership have at least improved over the years. if only the native intelligence of the hunters had, too.

        They’re offended if you take “their’ tree stand down on ‘your’ posted property. One man told us, “I’ve been hunting up here for 30 years” and as my husband told him, “it’s been posted for 40”.

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  5. Tish Farrell
    10/19/2016 • 05:07

    Share your feelings on trophy hunting.

    Like

  6. angloswiss
    10/19/2016 • 02:25

    Switzerland is unfortunately a land of hunters in certain regions Of course they also have certain seasons. I am glad there is no hunting in my area, although we still get menus in restaurants suddenly with deer etc. which I do not eat. There is an austrian pianist and singer, Georg Kreisler. Unfortunately his songs are all in german, but he sings a fresh happy tune about “Let us go poisoning piegeons in the park” (Tauben vergiften in Park) translated. Shame you cannot understand the german, it is bitter sweet and full of black humour.

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    • Marilyn Armstrong
      10/19/2016 • 10:06

      That’s one of Tom Lehrer’s songs. Translated into German. Lehrer only wrote about 50 songs. He never considered himself a professional entertainer, though he was hugely popular all over the world for years. But he was a math professor at Harvard and he never really gave it up. I’ll see if I can find his original recording in English. I’m sure it’s on YouTube.

      Even today… more than 50 years since poisoning pigeons was written – that was his first song – his music is very popular amongst piano bar singers. I have his songbook and used to play them … when I was still playing.

      This is the Wikipedia entry. I keep being surprised he’s still alive. He was putting our records when I was 8 years old, so he’s got to be well on in years.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer

      And here’s the English version (actually recorded in Denmark):

      Liked by 1 person

  7. slmret
    10/19/2016 • 00:34

    I don’t go into the woods near here because they’re mostly in mountainous or canyon areas where the escape routes are tenuous if fires should break out — add hunting season to that and it’s downright dangerous to be even near wooded areas! Tom Lehrer was a true genius in his expression of the attitudes he sang about!

    Liked by 1 person