A recent commentary published in this newspaper's Sunday Opinion Exchange section headlined "How high tech has killed real hunting" labored to make the case that game species stand little chance against today's ethically challenged, Special Ops-equipped sportsmen and women.
Particularly targeted were deer hunters, most of whom, the account alleged, are "perched on watchtowers on the forest's edge, armed with absurdly high-powered rifles with precision scopes and loaded with ammo packing enough velocity to take down an animal at 500 yards. Some guns can launch a hail of bullets as fast as the finger can pull the trigger."
Titillating stuff, indeed, and perhaps the unknowing audience to which this scribbling was intended was persuaded that nowadays in Minnesota a waylaying of animals occurs every fall, commando style, at the hands of hunters whose arsenals lack only air support to be truly combat-ready.
Except there's little truth here.
At least not if the point of the author's meanderings was that many hunters today, unlike their smoke-pole-toting, Daniel Boonesque brethren of yesteryear, "embrace the new-tech stuff that's surely [distorts] the meaning of 'fair chase.' "
Admittedly, the advent and use by modern hunters of improved firearms, bows and clothing, as well as specialty equipment such as handheld GPS units, has changed the field sports.
Yet such developments notwithstanding, even a cursory review of Minnesota sporting history supports a proposition entirely contrary to the myth that game species hardly stand a chance against today's hunters, relative to times past.
Take deer.