When I took my state’s required hunter safety course, one of the instructors was an older dude with grey hair and a ponytail who wouldn’t look out of place at a Dead & Company concert.
To point out the importance of wearing an orange hat during small game seasons, and also to “be sure of your target and what lies beyond it” he pointed out how much that grey hair and ponytail would look a lot like a squirrel if you only caught a glimpse of it through some brush.
Not saying that’s exactly what happened here, the kid doesn’t look like he was the grey ponytail type, but the article shook loose that memory in my head.
EDIT: not that I’m ungrateful, but somehow this is now my highest rated comment on Lemmy, and I’m just curious why this one in particular resonated to well.
Fair, I hadn’t thought of that but it makes sense. My first thought was that it was a very blatant murder cover up. But ive apparently fallen too deep into fiction if that’s what cane to mind first.
I’m not really into that sort of fiction, but it’s not that weird a thought to have.
You hang around conspiracy theorists much? Maybe too many crime shows on TV? I mean I thought I was cynical, but to have that be the first thing that occurs to you (and it sounds like you were pretty damned sure of it, too) blows me away.
Eh, I just read a lot of grimdark and grimderp stories. The kind where nothing good ever happens and the bad guys always get away with everything just because it would make the main character’s life worse. I’m a cashier, not law enforcement, so doesn’t matter if my first instinct is skewed if I have other people to make decisions for me.
Do you expect to remain in such a position for the rest of your life? Assuming not, then stepping back from such dark material to gain some more level-headed perspective might be wise.
Let people choose their own path in life.
Not sure how I might’ve come across as demanding they change. That was not my intent,
It’s not an uncommon thing both historically and in modernity, it’s got a built in cover of shit sometimes happens. Hell one of my ancestors got away with it 5 times before the Mormons figured out he was just murdering them and pawning their shit 2 towns over.
Hell one of my ancestors got away with it 5 times before the Mormons figured out he was just murdering them and pawning their shit 2 towns over.
I’d like to read that story if you’re willing to share it.
Not much to say about it in a particularly verbose way. Back when the Mormons were in Missouri he took a couple bounties that some nearby towns put out on the Mormon men in general, so he befriended some of the Mormons pretending to be a hunter from Arkansas and then led them to the woods and slit their throats one by one. He basically did this because he was bored and there was a lull in work for his lumber and crops, the pawning off their shit was just a bit of extra money.
Don’t know if anything was ever written about it, pretty sure this happened before Missouri declared open season the the Mormons and I think the bounties were technically illegal. Who knows maybe the Mormons wrote about it but it’s nothing fancy.
Edit: he didn’t actually slit their throats, I’ve been playing a high casualty MGS2 run because reasons and the imagery is stuck in my head. He shot them in the back.
Aside from emphasizing the hat, that also seems like an opportunity to emphasize the importance of positively identifying one’s target and backstop. It’s reckless to shoot at something that might be a valid target.
Quickscope lmao /s
A real hunter bunny hops, spins 360 with no scope.
I saw the poor kid’s hair in the thumbnail and was like “oh no.”
There are a LOT of brown squirrels in the Midwest.
I’d make sure to cut my hair AND wear a hat if I was going squirrel hunting and had hair like that.
Isn’t it true that orange looks green to animals?
For the animals that tigers prey on… yes. The orange and black pattern of most tigers stand out like a sore thumb to us, but to the animals tigers hunt they absolutely look green and blend in perfectly with the forest/jungle.
TIL i’m a trichromat, thanks.
I’m no expert on animal color vision, but different animals absolutely see color differently, some have markedly worse color vision than humans, others are even better
And of course we can’t really know for certain how different animals perceive color since we can’t actually see the world through their eyes as it gets processed through their brain, though we can make some pretty educated guesses.
AFAIK, most mammals except for some primates (like humans) and a few other exceptions, have dichromatic vision (have only 2 kinds of cone cells in their eyes instead of 3 like we do) so there’s gonna be some “gaps” in their color vision, and one of the common configurations is similar to red-green colorblindness in humans and would make orange look very similar or indistinguishable from green but the specifics do vary from one species to another.
Other types of animals like many fish, birds, and reptiles actually have 4 types of cones and so can see parts of the spectrum we can’t (though it doesn’t necessarily mean they can or can’t see the same colors we do and then some, where we have receptors for red, blue, and green light, they might have for example, red, blue, blue-green, and green, giving them essentially the same range of color vision we do but with extra sensitivity to the blue/green part of the spectrum)
And then of course you have animals like mantis shrimp with 12 or 16 types of receptors.
What is the hardest color for deer to see?
While deer have no trouble seeing short-wavelength colors like blue and green, their eyes are not well adapted to seeing long-wavelength colors, such as red and orange. This is what makes hunter-orange so useful in the field. Humans see it as a neon alert of another hunter’s presence while deer see it as a muted yellowish-gray that blends in reasonably well in mixed woods.
https://www.fieldandstream.com/stories/hunting/deer-hunting/what-colors-can-deer-see
this one in particular resonated to well.
Common sense is hard to come by.
dies
Interesting word choice.
Yeah it was the craziest thing! Someone shouted, “Hey look, a squirrel” and the poor kid just keeled over.
deleted by creator
Strangely appropriate
Murdered
Why the F do kids shoot squirrels? And who the F confuses a squirrel that fits in a shoe box with room to spare with a human of near-adult size?
The real question is why the fuck anyone would go hunting for squirrels with a large enough caliber weapon that it could kill a person.
You can drop a squirrel with a pellet air rifle im sure. Anything larger than that and youre not hunting a squirrel, youre just blowing it away.
Hunting squirrels is stupid enough on its own without doing it solely for the sake of shooting something thats alive. Thats not conservation, its blood sport
Squirrel is commonly hunted with a .22 rifle. It’s a very small bullet that could easily kill a person, especially with a round to the back of the head.
Squirrels are very frequently hunted with a .22. It works great for squirrels, but (like a pellet rifle) can be lethal to a human - especially if you shoot them in the head.
And there’s legitimate reasons to shoot squirrels. I used to do it for an exotic animal preserve because their population would explode and they’d eat everything in site.
their population would explode and they’d eat everything in site.
got a few friends who would go out to the family farm and hunt squirrel for a week for just this reason.
As a side-note, you can get air-powered pellet-rifles powerful enough to take down a deer.
Squirrels are good eating.
are they still good eating when blasted with a round that can outright kill a person?
People are squishy. You can outright kill a person with .22 subsonic which is great for squirrels.
Well… It’s not great for the squirrels TBF but good for the hunting anyway.
Is .22 good for squirrels?
No, it kills them… 😂
.22 is pretty much the only round you can use for squirrel wtf are you talking about
edit: I’ve had coffee and get the joke now
You mean like a .22 varmint round? Yes.
Dude any round can kill or maim, I had a kinsman who blew out his eye with a BBC gun back in the 50s. If a small ball round can do that imagine what a .22 or .32 could do.
I know you meant bb gun, but BBC gun is fucking hysterical!
Y’know usually I hate autocorrect but this time it’s funny. Best part is it’s because I was talking about the BBC company, know the TV thing.
I haven’t had squirrel dumplings in ages…
Listen, I’ve been on Squirrel hunts. You use a dog to chase them up a tree, then shoot them down with a .22.
At no time should you be aiming at anything person level.
Why would you hunt squirrels?
We eat them.
There are parts of the world where squirrels are invasive species. For example Grey Squirrels are invasive to the UK if I recall?
Edit, I just looked it up to fact check myself and yeah Eastern Grey Squirrels are invasive to the UK and parts of Europe and are a threat to native red Squirrels and the like. Ironically, they were introduced to the areas they’re now invasive in because people liked their aesthetics and wanted to hunt them. People are absolute idiots.
Yep. See also: foxes and rabbits in Australia.
Yup, see also humans, worldwide
The skeptic in me says it was an execution.
A bunch of “friends” go out shooting and they pop him in the head?
I wouldn’t necessarily say that. A lot of people are just careless with guns.
I would expect a manslaughter charge at most.
It worked for Dick.
Jesus Christ… How small was that teen? 🤨
Or how big are Iowa squirrels?
This one is honestly the more worrisome of the two for sure.
Put out the cigarette, Carl.
And then they came for furries
Nonsense
He died because someone didn’t identify their target and exercise muzzle control.
exercise muzzle control
I’m loving the expensive sounding wording here but if you get shot durit a hunting trip it is hard to not see that as karma
You think everyone who hunts deserves to be shot?
Interesting take that I don’t agree with at all.
No.
I said that if you do get shot as a hunter that it’s karma, quite a different thing
I actually think that hunting should be plain prohibited, there is no need for it, especially for bigger animals
I also think that hunting is a cowards sport. Here I am with my death clicker. I click, you, half a kilometer away, die. Ooohhh, so heroic, so difficult! If at leadt you’d use just s knife it’d require some skill
Sadly there’s a certain adorable resemblance
(Apologies in advance for a morbid joke.)
Presumably, he was even carrying some nuts…
If only he was 1/16th the size, then i would believe the shooters. He probably got hate targeted and got brought out to “hunt”
Murder did occur to me, I watch a lot of detective shows.
But it’s just possible his body was concealed by brush and the back of his hair was seen against the branches.
Of course it would have to be a nearsighted trigger-happy idiot too “alpha male” to wear glasses, (or has a dad who’s not gonna let his son appear weak) but I’m pretty sure the situation self-selected for that.
Dude should have known better than to go hunting with Dick Cheney.
It was actually the fault of the guy who got shot. In the style of bird hunting they were practicing, someone flushes the prey. The shooter, holding their shotgun at low ready, swiftly brings it up and fires. Everyone knows who is shooting and it’s on the rest to the group to stay down. Dumbass stood up in Cheney’s line of fire.
what do ya know, more irresponsible gun owners. If only something could be done to prevent idiots from getting guns, this whole country would be much better off.
Suggestion: instead of only preventing idiots from getting their hands in guns, why not prevent idiots? You know, with quality, accessible public education.
Why not both?
What the heck!
Albin!!!
Only a kid would make that mistake.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
