A sportsman’s not what you’d call Hank,
Though he sure liked to hunt and fish.
He would say, “It’s never too small,
To look good on a dinner dish.”
He’d no love for mounted trophies,
A Scrooge just like Ebenezer.
No trophy went up on Hank’s wall,
It all went into his freezer.
He was no fun when shooting skeet.
He’d wait until they all fell down,
Then he’d take very careful aim,
And shoot them lying on the ground.
One time when we were hunting ducks,
Crouched down behind a spillway wall.
Hank called a raft of ducks up close,
He was real good with his duck call.
I thought that we would both jump up,
And scare all of the ducks to flight.
Then shoot them as they all flew up,
It would be such a pretty sight.
I said, “Hank, don’t shoot them swimming,”
As he was climbing up on top.
He said, “Of course not, I’m not dumb,
I always wait until they stop.”
At first glance Harold in Duck Hunt doesn’t seem like too nice a person until you compare him with our ancestors. Can you imagine Davey Crockett giving the bear a head start? If you had to shoot quail with a bow and arrow, you sure wouldn’t want someone to scare them up first.
Shotgun technology is what brought sportsmanship into the hunting picture; it became too easy to hit a stationary target. Families no longer depended on the hunter to put food on the table. A hunter, hunting for his family’s survival, makes a poor sportsman indeed.
So give poor Harold a break, he just liked to eat what he hunted. If he accidentally ran over a rabbit, he would stop and dress it.
