If any of you are professionals with MD, and or PhD degrees and you wish to hunt Elk, this letter from my father from August 1, 1991 is full of great advice on how to insure your success. I give you this from his typewriter to the blogosphere:
August 1, 1991
Dear Jacky:
As you two set off into the wilds in pursuit of the larger of our North American ruminants I wanted to offer some ruminations on the subject of elking, why hunters, even medical specialists and an author, can, on rare occasions--fail.
First, the hunter has to be smarter than the elk. I have checked and have found according to experts that a top flight radiologist and a top flight emergency medicine specialist, combined, have about 1/2 percent the intelligence of the dimmest witted elk.
This is daunting. So maybe you should think about what the army special forces call "performance enhancer." This is a pill that makes ordinary soldiers able to leap tall buildings (or at least so it seems to them at the time) in a single bound. Smart pills could enhance your chances.
Secondly, go where the elk are instead of where the State tells you to go. Recent studies by elkologists show that the State always sends the hunter, especially the M.D., and in the case of the M.D,, Ph.D., into areas where elk have not been seen in the last 5000 years and six months, at least. These are the elkless tracts especially reserved for physicians and authors, who are, as we both realize, among the more gullible element of the population.
To succeed the physician should disguise himself as a window washer, truck driver, or bakery employee, for these members of the intelligentsia are always sent into the thick of the elk country from whence they emerge, without fail, with an average of a ton each of elk. The only thing to fear if this ruse works is the danger of being trampled by the jostling elk as they respond to the most awkward of calls. The hunter must be careful in these woods not to fart too loudly, as even this sound, ignored in the physician assigned hunt areas, can invoke dangerous attacks by herds of elk anxious to reply to any signal. In these areas they attack alarm clocks. They charge silent dog whistles, asthma victims who wheeze too profoundly, as well as frogs, crickets and hoot owls.
The elk must sense that the hunter has no college diploma. Even the faintest scent of academia will drive the elk many leagues distant. Therefore do not bathe, use deodorant, or speak words above one syllable for at least six weeks before the hunt. Incorrect grammar will also help pave the road to success. While in the woods pick your nose frequently and exclaim: "Well, shee-it, whar the fuck you reckin thelk is?"
This works every time.
I will be thinking about you as you set off into your assigned elkless regions. I hope this trip you won't have to haul some old man home every night to sleep in a soft bed and can wake early in the woods and have your first clean arrow shot before breakfast taking down a titan with a rack bigger than your car.
My heart thumps in anticipation of the steaks, the sausage, the roasts, and the hide. I'd like a hide as you know--just one will be fine. No need to save all those skins for me. Just one and I will have moccasins made for all of us. You know the place there that cures them, the animal stuffer.
As ever,
Old Grand-Dad
P.S. Infra-red satellite pix should pinpoint elk and are available to spies and Russian agents on a daily basis from the Pentagon.
Check with the neighborhood spy.
Dear Dad,
You were right we did not kill an elk.
Love Jacky
Jackson Delano Maybolt, President Urban Poverty Law Center
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