Articles
What Fresh Hell Is This?
October 2015
What do you call a war waged on unarmed opponents? Considering the rate and frequency of shooting I’m hearing out there now, there’s a massacre going on. If the victims being slain were human, it would be called mass murder. A pre-dawn ambush. All-out insanity. Evil incarnate.
But to the hunters on opening day annihilating ducks and geese, it’s tradition; harvesting nature; business as usual.
Someone must have signaled “charge” to an entire platoon waiting to attack at dawn, and a mindless barrage of semi-automatic shotgun fire shattered the morning air. Now it’s 7:30 a.m. and only the random explosions break the stillness. The blitzkrieg has been going on steadily for over forty-five minutes—since before first light (sunrise today is officially at 7:35, according to the NOAA weather radio).
I wasn’t sure if the “enemy,” no, “opponent,” no, victims were the elk herd who occasionally visit the neighbor’s hayfield, the stray black-tail deer who keep themselves mostly out of sight around here for fear of poachers, or the ducks and geese who are starting to gather on their customary wintering grounds.
Judging by the constant rapid gun fire, the victims must be the “waterfowl” whose “season” started today.
What fresh hell is this? Armageddon for avian kind? Or just another opening day for sport hunters?