A little light relief for you all this morning: A man in Tama, Iowa, was out pheasant hunting with his dog this week, when the mischievous little canine stepped on the hunter’s gun, shooting the man in the left leg. True story. The hunter, James Harris, is apparently recovering in an Iowa hospital, and, hopefully, having a long hard think about things like poetic justice, irony, and why it sucks to get shot at by another animal. There’s no word yet on whether the dog is being charged with the shooting.

4peaks/Creative Commons

As of this week, hunters have something new to worry about in addition to accidentally shooting each other and embarrassing themselves in public: Not being able to find any animals. At least that's the idea behind HIDE (Hunting Is Downright Evil), an anti-hunt group based in Minnesota that has been tranquilizing deer in popular hunting sites, painting them camouflage, and re-releasing them into the wild. According to HIDE President Jamie Drysdale, the group, which has more than 60 members in Minnesota and Wisconsin, are able to camouflage up to 12 deer a week, and hundreds of infuriated hunters have already submitted letters of complaint to their state governments. Here's a picture of a newly camouflaged buck from a hunting preserve in central Minnesota:

Amazing. Anyway, HIDE, here's wishing you the best of luck confounding hunters around the country. I can't wait to see the bear pictures!

I just got this message from a dude named Edward Krystosek, whose e-mail address, lovetohunt1234@yahoo.com, is cleverly designed to show that despite being an avid hunter, he can still count all the way to four. The e-mail contained three different photos of Ed posing with the corpses of animals he has presumably killed. I'll spare you the other pics, but the message itself is priceless:

I figured you would enjoy seeing these.

 I will keep sending them to you since I know you will enjoy them.

 I fugure if you harass me, I will return the favor.

Anyway, it sounds like our Ed is a regular reader, so I "fugured" I'd Google him to see if I could learn some more about him. Turns out Ed hasn't left much of an Internet trail behind him, but in the process of seeking him out, I stumbled across this wonderful study about the long-suspected link between hunting and small penis size. Apparently, Diminutive Male Genitalia Disorder (DMGD) and taking out your excess aggression on defenseless animals are inextricably linked. It just explains so much! I don't know if Ed's a sufferer himself, but if he is, it does provide a good explanation of why the poor guy craves attention so badly that he needs to send pics of himself killing animals to PETA. Here's hoping Ed gets the help he so desperately needs.