The_Dunedan

...And welcome back, folks. Time now to turn our attention to the myriad of interesting creatures you can find in the Deer Woods. First off, let's confront the most obvious and common...

...the American Grey Squirrel. These little bastards will drive you crazy. They make noise, they chatter at you and make you twitchy, and if you're wearing electronic hearing protection, the amplification can make them sound like a herd of elephants bashing through the woods.

Deer themselves range from canny and almost ghostly creatures to pure stupid meat on the hoof. They are all equipped with superb senses of hearing and ability to see movement, but are frequently much less inclined to take notice of scent than people think. And let me tell you, folks, deer can be blunderingly easy to shoot. This is part of what makes all the rest of today's installment of Hunting Season Blues so silly and sad.

As for the varieties of Homo allegedly Sapiens which you may encounter in the woods at this time of year, as before they fall into a number of types. Some are nice, some are nasty, and some are just plain odd.

Section A: Poachers

1: Fiddy Cent. Aah, good ol' Fiddy. Dressed in semi-camoflage patterns and looking like the bastard love-child of Ali G. and Ted Nugent, Fiddy figures that all deer, like everything else everywhere, belong to him if he can get his hands on them. As a consequence, Fiddy will happily traipse all over any sort of real-estate that looks promising, despite the fact that he has fired his rifle a total of three times, and despite the further fact that in 7,000 years of recorded human history no self-respecting deer has ever been shot by someone dressed as a carnival ride. When confronted by landowners, lease-holders, and sometimes game-wardens, Fiddy will attempt to bluster and sometimes threaten his way out of a situation. When this fails, and Fiddy is subjected to an ass-beating or a close encounter with the business-end of a .45, he will usually avoid a given area in future. He will not, however, give up on poaching.

2: Robbin' Hood: Robbin' is convinced that "everyone else" is "hoarding" all the deer in a given area, and that he is therefore permitted to poach off his neighbors land and herds, since "they're taking more than their fair share anyway, where else are all the deer going?" Unlike Fiddy Cent, Robbin will not usually become confrontation, except perhaps to lecture a landowner or "Possum Cop" in the process of being ejected/arrested. Frequently posessed of a petty streak a mile wide, Robbin will sometimes need to be ejected several times from the same property before taking a hint and moving on.

3: Guy O' Guisburn: Robbin' Hood's much more dangerous cousin, Guy O' Guisburn likewise believes "everyone else" to be taking "his" game, since he can't seem to find any. Guy, however, is a pure and simple believer in Might Makes Right, and believes that any game he can find, wherever he can find it, is his. Guy is easily provoked, and can become murderously dangerous when confronted. A notorious classic case several years back resulted in several hunters being murdered and over a dozen injured in Wisconsin, when they attempted to evict an Hmong poacher from a hunting lease. A murderous temper and a colossal sense of entitlement make Guy O' Guisburn one of the most dangerous creatures in the deer woods. However, Guy is coming under increasing threat from habitat encroachment and competition from other species.

Section B: Indiginous Wildlife

1: La Loup: Like his namesake, La Loup is heavily armed, highly territorial, and known to hunt in extended family groups. La Loup hunts a well-defined home range with a pack of family and close friends, and only rarely hunts outside of it. Poachers and carrioneers are not tolerated lightly, and La Loup defends his herds as food sources for his pack. Poachers are seen as stealing food from the pack as a whole, and are treated harshly although not usually killed except in self-defense. Guy O' Guisburn and La Loup are frequent antagonists, but La Loup's pack strategy usually leaves him the victor.

2: The American Mountain Gorilla: Large, slow-moving, immensely strong and patient, the American Mountain Gorilla inhabits every mountain range with suitable climates. Usually observed wearing beards and flannel shirts, the American Mountain Gorilla frequently dons various sorts of camoflage for his hunting excursions, and tends to favor large-diameter rounds in the .45 Long Colt-.45-70 class, usually in lever-action rifles. A related species, the American Chimpanzee, is smaller and more agile, though he retains the signature beard. The American Chimpanzee favors smaller-bore weapons with longer range, and is more energetic and vocal than his larger cousin. Like La Loup, both are strongly territorial and disinclined to tolerate poaching.

3: Animal Mother: "Anything that runs is a deer! Anything that stands still is a well-disciplined deer!" Animal Mother, always male and mildly crazy, has racked up quite a kill count over his years. He's decorated the wall of his living room with antlers the size of chandeliers, and the floors with hides like persian rugs. Of course, he's also shot plenty of tree branches, squirrels, bluejays, dogs, cats, cows, rocks...you get the picture. Certain that every sound and movement is another trophy buck, Animal Mother makes certain of them all. Not infrequently, Animal Mother kills a fellow hunter, occasionally even a family member. Thankfully, Animal Mother has begun to decline in recent years, his former numbers falling prey to the superior strategies of more competitive species of super-predators.

4: Mr. Good Time: Male, in his 30s or 40s, and almost always married to a woman who disapproves of alcoholic beverages, Mr. Good Time looks upon hunting season as a chance to indulge. He will frequently wander up into a tree-stand with a few six-packs of beer, to spend the day quietly drinking, reading a book about WWII, and perhaps killing something. Mr. Good Time's stands can usually be identified by the small pile of beer cans at the base of the tree. Mr. Good Time favors blinds, or large-capacity climbing stands with room for a small cooler. Like Animal Mother, Mr. Good Time is known for his propensity for shooting at almost anything. Fortunately for his targets (and unfortunately for everything else he points his rifle at), Mr. Good Time is usually too intoxicated to be truly dangerous anytime after midmorning (unless you happen to be his lawyer.)

5: Elmer Fudd: Elmer is usually older, almost always male, and frequently goes on at some length about how gadget-crazy this younger generation is. In the woods, Elmer is usually found wearing basic coveralls or camoflage, carrying an old-school bolt-action or lever-action rifle, and frequently upstaging his younger rivals by sheer patience.

6: Frick And Frack: A pair, always male, Frick and Frack are usually up to some sort of new ill-advised scheme every season. Frequently willing to spend large sums of money on their latest ploy to draw in the deer, Frick and Frack never seem to give any of their plans enough time for the deer to actually become accustomed to (and therefore respond to) them, and as a consequence seldom kill anything. Many of their endeavors (half-finished feedlots, improperly constructed stands, etc) peter out from boredom or upon reading an article in a magazine about a Better Way To Do X.

7: Frankie Four Fingers: Accident-prone, not terribly bright, and inclined to taking unwise chances, Frankie Four Fingers is a frequent guest at his local hospital and police station, thanks to all of the above tendancies. Whether it's falling out of a tree-stand or being caught with a .30-06 during bow season, something is always going badly for poor Frankie, and he frequently spends the entire season recuperating from the results.

8: The Thinker: Like Rodin's famous statue, The Thinker is capable of sitting still for geologic spans of time. Frequently older, The Thinker will frequently rack up an impressive kill count, but the cracking of joints and groaning of muscles held in one position for hours at a time will spoil many shots at the crucial moment.

9: The Stalker: The opposite of The Thinker, The Stalker prefers to move slowly through the woods, hoping to sneak up on a deer and either shoot it by surprise or as it tries to sneak away. The Stalker lives a dangerous life; besides the risk of poisonous snakes and falling hip-deep into groundhog burrows, he runs the risk of being inadvertently shot by Animal Mother or Mr. Good Time. He also runs an increased risk of running into Fiddy, Robbin', and Guy, since he is actually moving around.

10: The Game Warden: Game Wardens come in all shapes and sizes. Some are lackadaisical; others, dressed in ghillie-suits and armed with dummy deer and thermal-imaging cameras, are Inspector Javert's country cousin. Game Wardens are respected by few, liked by almost none, but obeyed by most because there's noplace like the woods to get shot. The inverse of this, of course, is that over-zealous Game Wardens sometimes go out on patrol...and never come home, having encountered Guy O' Guisburn. La Loup, the American Mountain Gorilla, and the American Mountain Chimpanzee will also defend their territories against the Game Warden in times of extreme food stress.