Excerpt From A Bad Duck Hunt
This is about duck hunting, specifically, about those who pursue the sport with zeal, even in the face of uncompromising and abject defeat.
Every year, duck huners purchase over one and one half million Federal Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamps---"duck stamps"1--- and bag2 over sixteen million ducks and geese.
Perhaps,fortunately, no one measures the number of ducks that get away. But it's a big, big number. As a matter of fact, next to the actual hunt, a duck hunter's favorite pastime is the creation and delivery of excuses for failure.
Today, we're long past flimsy, pusillanimous respones like, "Well, I really like being outside ... appereciating the outdoors ... reveling in nature's resplendent beauty ... breathing in the rich, cool air of the woods and marsh ... taking in the slow coming of the rosy-fingered dawn ... and reflecting on the majesty of a soaring eagle or great blue heron fishing in solitude along the banks of a tranquil pond."
