What?

I am not an outdoorsman. Not remotely.
I did some fishing when I was younger, mostly on annual trips with my uncle to the Wisconsin trout opener. But somewhere along the line the appeal of getting up at an hour when decent people are comfortable in bed just to sit in the cold and dark in hopes of jamming a hook through the lip of a slimy, wriggling fish and pulling it onto the shore — where you have to, like, touch it — just lost its appeal.

I've never hunted in my life. Never fired a gun at anything more threatening than the left over jack-o-lanterns we shot at from the deck of my mom's house when I was growing up. In my defense, some of those pumpkins were pretty intimidating.
My experience with firearms starts with a BB gun, runs to a .22 rifle — the one we called Pumpkin-bane — and pretty much stops there.
All of which meant I was in for a really big surprise when I showed up at the Dakota County Gun Club last weekend to take pictures of the club's annual deer rifle sight-in.
The event, which is covered in more detail on page 6B of this issue, is a chance for hunters to fine-tune their aim so they can whack woodland critters more efficiently when deer season rolls around next month. This is a good thing, I realize, because accurate shooting means more deer killed immediately and fewer ticked off animals wandering through the woods with a bullet in their spleen and a score to settle.
So, yeah, the sight-in is a benefit to hunters and lingering-wound-averse deer alike. But it's also really, really loud. Like, uncomfortably loud. Like, feels-like-you-got-punched-in-the-kidneys loud. Like, Rosie O'Donnell loud.
I guess I should have expected that. But remember, most of the weapons I've fired are either powered by air or being held by a character in a video game. These deer rifles are new to me. I asked someone at the sight-in what type of rifle was most common and he rattled off some numbers that might as well have been launch codes for nuclear missiles or the combination for his high school gym locker. All I know is, based on the noise they generated, most of the rifles fired last Saturday would hold you in good stead were you ever attacked by a a deer, a rhinoceros or a Soviet tank.
Are deer tougher than I realized?
I don't have any moral objection to hunting. I don't think I'll ever need my meat to be so fresh I'm willing to hack it off the bone myself. If you want to track wild game to put meat on your table, by all means do. If you want to pop a cap in Bambi's white tail just because you think he's giving you the stink-eye, knock yourself out. I'm just not sure I see the appeal of getting up sometime before dawn to sit in an uncomfortable tree stand all on the off chance I'll get to fire a weapon that will deafen me and slam into my shoulder like Billy Joel into a Hamptons home.
I'd rather go biking.