James Lileks: Grab your brightest duds: It's 'harvest' time

By JAMES LILEKS, Star Tribune

Last update: November 7, 2009 - 11:55 PM

Deer! It's what's for dinner, if you can manage to suppress all memory of watching "Bambi." Saturday marked the firearms hunting opener, the rite of autumn when thousands of Minnesotans put on extremely bright clothes and stand very, very still trying not to be noticed. It's like the opposite of nightclubbing.

According to the DNR, a half-million people will hunt this season; 200,000 deer will be "harvested." Not crazy about that word, really; it makes it sound as if the deer are growing in neat rows in fields. As if a farmer decided he'd plant fewer acres of horses this year, put in some bucks in the back forty. News report: Ag experts thought the hailstorm that hit the Bambi-high crop had ruined this year's deer yield, but it turned out that most of the crop just suffered a concussion and was expected to recover.

"Harvest?" Look, be honest. "Killed" is the word you're looking for. It certainly doesn't bother hunters to say it, and those who oppose hunting -- I'm not one, if you're curious; don't like it myself, but that's just me -- will find the euphemism evasive.

Second: I'm no math whiz, but if half a million go out to hunt, and 200,000 deer are felled, it would seem that -- hold on, let me get out the calculator -- 300,000 hunters are failing to get a deer. This is like learning that 50 million Americans bowl every year, but 30 million fail to hit a single pin. Perhaps some are support personnel; perhaps some hunters don't bring guns at all, but merely shout coordinates into a walkie-talkie and expect jets to pound the deer's position. It still seems like a lot of people who go home empty-hooved.

In any case, we wish everyone a safe season, and if we learn that 100,000 hunters were skunked because the deer held up a sign saying WABBIT SEASON, well, I have Elmer Fudd's number. He can explain it all.

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 • More daily at www.startribune.com/buzz

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