killed when his retriever stepped on his shotgun.  How does a dog fire a weapon, you ask?

Perry Price, a 46-year-old math teacher, shot a goose on Saturday then put his gun in the back of the truck where the dog was waiting to retrieve the bird… Investigators found paw prints and mud from the dog, a chocolate Labrador retriever named Arthur, on the shotgun.

"Bad dog!  Bad dog, Arthur!  Gosh, I'm sorry.  I don't know how many times I've told him not to shoot people.  Say, do you mind if I rub his nose in the wound?  I really want to break this habit."

(Captain Ufford says… Treat every weapon as if it were loaded.  Never point a weapon at any thing you do not intend to kill.  Keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you are ready to fire.  Keep the weapon on safe until you intend to fire. Those are the four safety rules for handling firearms.  Screw up one of those rules and it's possible that no one gets hurt.  Fuck up on three out of four, and you fail at life.)

Denizens of the Canadian province of Alberta aren't killing animals like they used to, but the government has a solution:

The province has designated September 22 as its first "Hunting Day," an attempt to lure the video-game generation off the couch and into the great outdoors. Ted Morton, the province's Minister of Sustainable Resource Development — and an avid hunter — said a generation is being lost to television, computers and shopping malls. "Hunting is more fun (than video games) and a lot healthier," he said.

It sure is healthier.  The blood one receives from devouring the excised heart or liver from a fresh kill surely straightens the spine more than Cool Ranch Doritos and Mountain Dew.  Anyway, I hope the Pentagon saw this story: fewer Canadians are carrying guns – time to invade. -KD

11-year-old Alabama native Jamison Stone killed a really big boar:

Jamison, who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Monster Pig. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

Did I mention that this hog was 9'4" and weighed 1,051 lbs.?  That's a pretty big piece of meat to hunt with a revolver.  There was a worry that the gigantic boar would wheel on his pursuers and charge with 5-inch tusks as wild hogs are apt to do.  Be assured that Jamison's dad and the guides were toting high-powered rifles, presumably to put Jamison down clean before he was gored.  

"It feels really good," Jamison said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It's a good accomplishment. I probably won't ever kill anything else that big."

Whoa, not so fast kid, you haven't even been married yet.  I heard they grow their brides big in the backwoods of Alabama.  This great beast met his end on May 3rd, and it's surmised that the hams will be as big as car tires and the meat will produce over seven hundred pounds of sausage.  In Chicago, we call that breakfast. -KD  

When I was in high school I lived across the Mississippi River from Missouri and called it the Show-Me The Way Out State (I wasn't punched enough in high school). But it's true: Missouri kinda blows. Both of its major cities (St. Louis and KC) spill over into other states, and Kansas City took the name of the state next door, most likely out of shame. Also, as leggy vixen Kristine pointed out to me, Missouri's privileged bobcat class frequently oversteps its bounds.

As [Mitch] Walter was inspecting the Cape Rock Water Treatment Plant property Tuesday night, a rabbit leaped into his golf cart — followed by a 25-pound bobcat. The rabbit then jumped back out, leaving Walter alone with a large, frightened feline.

"The cat went from a sleek predator after fast food to a ball of fur trying to jump through the windshield of the golf cart," Walter said. Walter received scratches on his neck while shoving the bobcat out, necessitating a round of rabies shots, but was otherwise unhurt.

Witnesses say the scene looked like a Heathcliff fight in which stars, exclamation points, and number signs shot out of a cloud of dust. It was accompanied by high-tempo banjo music.

I always think of Jonathan Papelbon as some XBox-playing child, so it's weird to think of him  operating a firearm and going hunting. And it's really, really weird to think of him duck-hunting with Eli Manning (last item, registration required).

Papelbon regaled reporters with tales of duck hunting last month with New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning in Manning's hometown of Drew, Miss. "We slaughtered those ducks," said Papelbon, who also boasted about his duck recipes, which he claims are far superior to one he found in a book that was attributed to Ted Williams ("I tried it and it was terrible, dude" he said.) "What I do," Papelbon said, "you marinate it in Coke and Italian dressing, right. What the Coke does, the carbonation takes out all the game flavor. So you marinate it in Coke and Italian dressing in a Ziploc bag. Then what you do, you slice up a breast, quarter it in fours, and then you wrap those four little nuggets in bacon, jalapeno, and sour cream, so you wrap it all in a piece of bacon, throw it on a grill. It's amazing."

So, there you go. Today's lessons: Ted Williams's recipes are bullshit, marinate your duck in Coke, and leave Eli at home. C'mon, Eli overthrows 6-foot-5 Plaxico Burress on ten-yard out patterns. You really think he can shoot a duck on the move?

Note: I fucking hated that asshole dog. 

Via Foul Balls, here's the heart-warming tale of world cruiserwweight champion O'Neil Bell (somebody get that guy a first name), who over the weekend was arrested for allegedly — allegedly, people — hurling a hatchet at his sparring partner during a training run.

Deputies responding to a possible fight off Highway 38 found Bell's sparring partner, 37-year-old Larry Slayton, afraid for his life with cuts from running through the brush, sheriff's spokeswoman Arden Wiltshire said Monday.

Slayton told the deputies Bell had become angry with him during a training session in the woods and threw a hatchet the boxer was carrying for protection against bears. Slayton fled, dodging large rocks Bell threw at him, Wiltshire said.

There are two lessons here, sexy readers.

1. A hatchet is, indeed, enough to effectively defend yourself against bears. Unless that Bear is Tank Johnson.
2. If you fail to be attacked by bears while training to defend your boxing title, you may want to stay sharp by hunting your fellow man. Man is the ultimate prey.