Canned Hunt
Five hunters each paid $5,000 to kill a zebra, and without leaving Michigan. A small zoo has closed, and the animals sold off. A local hunting lodge bought the zebras. The zebras were in a fenced-off area of 120 acres. As the hunters lifted the barbed wire to enter the zebra pen, a young man rode over on an ATV. A beer cooler was strapped to the back. The young man said his dad owned the ranch, and he wanted to make sure the hunters got the best experience possible. It was 8:00 A.M., but they were on vacation, so they all put their rifles down and helped themselves. The men recounted their memorable shoots. All had bagged deer, ducks and geese. Two of them had been to Africa. One of them had killed a crocodile in Australia. The young man asked if this was going to be a difficult shoot. No, the hunters all said, these animals were accustomed to humans. But it was still a chance to bag a zebra. The young man said, “I heard they drug the animals for these hunts sometimes.” Yeah, sometimes, the hunters responded, but of course these five were skillful enough to bag sober zebras. There’s no sport in shooting drugged animals. “Well, I guess I don’t think of it as a sport,” the young man said, pulling out a handgun and firing. The men were too drunk to grab their rifles and retaliate.