I've eaten venison once in my life, and that was a gift from a hunter friend of my father's.

Dad used to hunt when he was a teenager, living on San Juan Island (in the San Juans in northern Puget Sound), but that was pretty much a necessity back then.

I don't hunt. I enjoy pistol shooting at paper targets at a gun club range, and at beer and soft drink cans. Filled with water, a soft drink or beer can makes a satisfying geyser when hit square on with a nine millimeter bullet!

A friend of mine used to go hunting for deer once during deer season every year. That was it. He either got one or he didn't (which was usually the case), and that was his walk in the woods for the year.

One year he took his walk in the woods and at the end of the day he was walking across an open field back to where he'd parked his car when he heard a rifle shot and simultaneous a bullet whizzed past his ear. The shot had come from a clump of trees nearby. He was in plain sight and wearing a bright orange vest for visibility.

No way could he have been mistaken for a deer. Then another shot rang out and a bullet zinged past him, but he was diving for the dirt at the time and once again, it missed. He yelled! And then came a third shot from the clump of trees!

In addition to his rifle, he carried a Smith and Wesson "Highway Patrolman" .357 Magnum revolver. He drew it and, lying prone and resting on his elbows, he panned across the clump of trees and emptied the revolver!

He reloaded the revolver, then lay there for several minutes. Nothing more. Slowly and cautiously, he rose to his feet. Still nothing from the clump of trees. Keeping his eyes on it, and carrying his rifle in one hand with the revolver in his other—and at the ready—he continued to where he'd parked his car, got in, and drove off, still shaking.

There were no news reports of anyone killed in a hunting accident in that area, so apparently no one went hunting and just disappeared and no bodies were found. So maybe the trigger-happy jerk in the clump of trees learned his lesson….

Make sure you know what you're shooting at. And don't shoot at anything that might just shoot back.

Don Firth