"if i were hungry, i would happily hunt anything that runs or crawls or flies, even relatives, and tear them down with my teeth.  but it isn't hunger that drives millions of armed american males to forests and hills every autumn, as the high incidence of heart failure among the hunters will prove.  somehow the hunting process has to do with masculinity, but i don't quite know how.  i know there are any number of good and efficient hunters who know what they are doing; but many more are overweight gentlemen, primed with whisky and armed with high-powered rifles.  they shoot at anything that moves or looks as though it might, and their success in killing one another may well prevent a population explosion.  if the casualties were limited to their own kind there would be no problem, but the slaughter of cows, pigs, farmers, dogs, and highway signs makes autumn a dangerous season in which to travel.  a farmer in upper new york state painted the word COW in big black letters on both sides of his white bossy, but the hunters shot it anyway.  in wisconsin, as i was driving through, a hunter shot his own guide between the shoulder blades.  the coroner questioning this nimrod asked, "did you think he was a deer?"

"yes, sir, i did."

"but you weren't sure he was a deer."

"well, no sir.  i guess not."

John Steinbeck

"Travels with Charley in Search of America"