John Kerry: Outdoorsperson
Be ve-e-e-wy quiet! He’s crawling on his belly, hunting freakishly huge deer: Sportsman John.
In July, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that “I go out with my trusty 12-gauge double-barrel, crawl around on my stomach.”
Crawling in the woods is tough, not to mention loud, work — which is why almost all hunters except Kerry prefer to either stand or climb up into tree stands.
“I track and move and decoy and play games and try to outsmart them.”
He was presumably referring to deer, not voters. But Kerry, a “former law-enforcement person,” as he is also wont to describe himself, seems to have forgotten that the use of decoys is forbidden under Massachusetts law. Just using a decoy deer can mean a fine of up to $100, 30 days in jail, and/or loss of hunting license.
In the current issue of Field & Stream, the outdoorsperson was asked about the biggest deer he’d ever killed — er, harvested.
“Probably an 8-pointer,” Kerry replied, “something like that. Nothing terribly big.” Actually, an 8-pointer would be a rather large kill to most hunters — the kill of a lifetime in fact.
But Bwana John wasn’t done. “I once had an incredible encounter with the most enormous buck — I don’t know, 16 points or something. It was just huge. And I failed to pull the trigger at the right moment. I was hunting down in Massachusetts, on the Cape.”
The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife doesn’t keep such statistics, but an open invitation on the radio for calls from Cape hunters turned up no one who had ever glimpsed such a 16-pointer in Barnstable County.