Category: You have to be kidding, right!?!
English upper-crust wing shooters can be prone to throwing snits and fits, but this one has nothing to do with a servant’s tipping over the toddy or Lord Muddleford wearing incorrect knickers on the moors.Now, the genteel gentry is accusing British pheasants of “unsporting behavior.” That’s pheasants, not peasants, folks.
“They are no longer flying high enough or fast enough to make a decent shot, and the (older) ones are too lazy or fat to take off,” sniffed an editorial in a London paper. “Game birds must be bred to fly up … and play the game.”
Over the past few years, outraged pheasant hunters have complained that birds raised for private shoots have grown sluggish and docile, refusing to break madly from cover and flap at Mach One.
One widely-discussed theory lays the explanation squarely on Darwin: high-flying, fast-moving birds get blown out of the sky, while ground-hugging slowpokes are loftily ignored.
The couch potatoes, however, laugh all the way back to the breeding pens, where they presumably pass on their genetic predisposition to woof a second helping of suet and lumber through the air like a DC-3 with the starboard engine out.
“A perverse Darwinism of the survival of the unfittest seems to be working its natural deselection,” asserts the Times.
“A little poke in the tail feathers with an 870 might help,” asserts American Handgunner, “It’s the American way.”
Return to the Scene of the Crime
Just four simple rules of armed robbery, and this rocket scientist couldn’t learn ’em. Rule number one — Don’t return to the scene of the crime. Number two — If you do, don’t bring a friend. Number three — If you do, don’t approach one of the clerks you stuck up at gunpoint only five days previous and mutter to your compadre, “She’s the one.”
Number four — If you’re stupid enough to violate rules one through three, don’t hang around window-shopping until the cops arrive.
Police in San Diego were at first elated, then mystified, and then just a little let down when they arrested the suspect in an armed robbery of a Toys-R-Us store in the metropolitan area. Five days after the original stickup, the suspect waltzed back into the store with a companion.
Smirking broadly, our criminal mastermind sidled up close to the female clerk he had so recently terrorized, gave his buddy a knowing nod, and said, “She’s the one.” If there was any doubt left in the clerk’s mind, it vanished in an instant.
Young Einstein and friend then proceeded to casually window-shop the area, as the clerk first called the gendarmerie, then stalked the villain on foot. SDPD’s finest arrived in a timely fashion and took no guff, cut no slack, hooked ’em, booked ’em and didn’t look back.
They were pleased to make the arrest and clear the crime, but as one cop asked, “How proud can you be of arresting a cretin like this?”
Hey, pal, it all counts toward 30.
Sometimes Love Hurts — A Bunch
Linda Dillon says she tried to commit suicide with a .22 but the cops are having a tough time buying it. First, she can’t produce the weapon. Second, one shot in the head could be a suicide attempt, okay, but seven pops in the gourd? Something just ain’t right.
Hermosa Beach, Calif., officers went to Dillon’s apartment after a downstairs neighbor reported hearing moans. They found Dillon, a 57-year-old computer consultant, lying incoherent in the hallway of her blood-spattered apartment.
Hospital X-rays showed three slugs still lodged in her head, and other wounds to her neck, cheek, and behind her left ear. A powder-scorched pillow was found at the scene, but no weapon.
As soon as Dillon could talk, she claimed she had tried to commit suicide. Police said she was uncooperative and evasive about such minor matters as when, how, and why she made the alleged attempt, much less how she maneuvered a pillow into position to muffle the shots, then found the determination to fire six or seven rounds into her noggin, then get rid of the gun.
The usual suspects — an ex-husband and a friend — were rounded up, questioned and released. Police were convinced neither was involved in the incident, and agreed they were unlikely to come up with a guilty party as long as Dillon claimed to be her own assailant.
Dillon’s survival was amazing enough, but a doctor’s report made it all the more puzzling.
“The wounds are old,” said police Captain Mike Lavin. “The doctor estimates at least 48 hours or more old. I’m not kidding, it’s unbelievable … We’re talking at least a few days, maybe three or four days.”
Lavin expressed just a tad bit of doubt at Dillon’s suicide story. If she was covering up for someone, he theorized, “It must be someone she really likes.”
Author’s Note: Don’t even think about it. I don’t like anybody that much.
—
Mark Moritz hung up his satirical spurs to a collective sigh of relief from America’s gun writers whom he had lampooned in Friendly Fire for two long, painful years. The 10 Ring is written by Commander Gilmore, a retired San Diego police officer who bases his humor, like Mark did, on actual occurrences. All the incidents described by the Commander are true.
Despite my involvement Heart of Dixie was actually quite a flop, earning a bit north of $1 million against an $8 million investment.
When I was in college I was kind-of a movie star. I played in an actual Hollywood movie. It was a ghastly film but an extraordinary experience. I got into a fake fight and inadvertently knocked the movie’s female lead stupid, grinding the entire production to a halt.
The movie was titled Heart of Dixie. Fret not, you’ve likely not heard of it. It was a ham-handed coming-of-age drama wherein Yankee actors shot a movie in the South with atrocious fake regional accents. However, it was my first (and only) real taste of stardom.
How awesome was I, you ask? Well, not meaning to brag, but my left hand figured prominently on the back of the box at Blockbuster, back when Blockbuster was a thing.
I played a National Guardsman safeguarding the arrival of the first black student at a fictitious Alabama university. The entire sordid narrative seemed a thinly-veiled reference to James Meredith’s matriculation at the University of Mississippi in 1962. It was even shot on the Ole Miss campus where the real riots actually took place.
James Meredith was the first African-American student admitted to the University of Mississippi back in 1962. His arrival sparked several days of racial violence. Things are way better today. Our riot scene was recreated at the same spot. Public domain.
I was a freshly-minted paratrooper. Unlike the other college student extras who signed up to be Guardsmen, I actually looked the part. That bought me the prime position in front of Ally Sheedy, the real star of the movie. She was coming off of War Games and The Breakfast Club and was, as a result, a proper movie star. She was skinnier up close than I had expected.
Phoebe Cates, Virginia Madsen, and Treat Williams rounded out the lineup. Don Michael Paul played a substantial role, but his claim to fame at the time was limited to a well-known TV commercial for Doublemint Gum (he actually told me that). Kurtwood Smith played a college professor.
Making movies involves a great deal of waiting, at least for a peon like me. During once dead stretch I enjoyed an extended discussion with Kurtwood Smith. He played the villain Clarence Boddicker in Robocop.
I asked him about the guns they used in that movie. His character logged a fair amount of trigger time behind the Cobra Assault Cannon. This fictitious prop was built around a .50-caliber Barrett M82 anti-materiel rifle. He said it was very heavy.
These Federal Marshals are heading onto the Ole Miss campus to try to help keep the peace back in 1962.
Public domain.
The Setting
They split us faux Guardsmen into two ranks facing outward to form a cordon through which the young female African American student must pass.
Extras playing students and angry redneck townspeople were arrayed on the outside of the cordon. Fake Federal Marshals escorted the young lady toward the building. Because of my military bearing (I guess) I drew the prime spot restraining Ally Sheedy.
The entire scene is maybe five minutes on screen. Making it required two long hot days. Most of that was spent with me holding a welded up M1 Garand rifle while Ally Sheedy stretched to see over my shoulder while looking pensive.
Kurtwood Smith played the villain Clarence Boddicker in Robocop. He said the weapons they carried, which were made from Barrett M-82 rifles like this one, were very heavy.
Most of the weapons were rubber dummies. Because I was in the close-ups, mine was an actual rifle that had been demilled. During our production breaks I entertained the cast and crew by disassembling and reassembling the thing on the sidewalk.
My job was actually pretty cool. Once the director yelled, “Action!” all heck broke loose. The angry crowd rioted, and the poor black girl got jostled. Amidst the chaos this redneck guy breaks through the far side of the cordon and spits on her.
I see him do it, inexplicably hand my rifle to the guy beside me, and proceed to pummel him vigorously before passing him off to a fake cop.
Ally Sheedy takes advantage of the hole I left in the line to slip in and emote with this girl. With the spitting redneck now subdued, I grab my rifle and use it to push Miss Sheedy roughly back into position.
Then the fake Governor makes a rousing racist speech, and everybody goes home. At least that’s the way it was supposed to play out.
I entertained myself over two days of shooting a movie by stripping and reassembling my demilled M1 rifle.
Tragedy Strikes
At one point during the riot scene an overexuberant townsperson jolted me vigorously. I reflexively rotated to regain my footing and caught Ally Sheedy, the star of the entire movie, under the chin with the very real muzzle of my rifle, knocking her right into next week.
We didn’t get any classes on how to be a good extra, but I’m pretty sure cold cocking the movie’s lead would not have been in the curriculum.
Fortunately there was already too much footage with me in it for them to fire me. Miss Sheedy disappeared to her trailer to have her bruises camouflaged by the makeup department, while several hundred extras just sat around … all thanks to me.
When she returned I apologized vigorously, but she clearly didn’t want to talk about it. However, I can sincerely say I once actually beat up a movie star. Ally, if you’re out there someplace — no kidding, I really am sorry.
The young lance corporal tucked the wood stock and clenched the pistol grip of his Lewis gun, a “light” machine gun he was all too familiar with from his time lugging one around during the First World War. His assistant gunner secured a magazine on top of the gun and gave his shoulder a quick tap, indicating he is loaded and ready to fire.
To the right and left of him, his fellow soldiers did the same with their Lewis guns. The anticipation was building, his heart began beating faster and faster. He felt anxious, but not like he did in the trenches during the war. This was a feeling of familiarity without the risk or sense of danger.
Someone off to the side of the firing line yelled, “Targets spotted, open fire!”. He pulled the trigger, the bolt closed, and the first round from his machine gun went off, producing a rhythmic symphony of automatic weapons fire. In the distance, several hundred meters ahead of him, the lance corporal could see his target plain as day: emus. A nice-sized group of them numbering 50 or more were scrambling across the Campion, Western Australia plains to avoid the snapping and whizzing of bullets being thrown at them at the cyclic rate.
Eventually, the mob of emu scattered, and the soldiers ceased-fire with no birds in sight to engage with their guns. As the lance corporal’s assistant gunner moved to replace the empty mag of his machine gun, he thought, I can’t believe we’re here to shoot emus. Nevertheless, his unit, the Seventh Heavy Battery, Royal Australian Artillery, spent the next month doing just that between November and December 1932.
The events described above may sound like a story someone’s grandfather fabricated to tell their grandkids. Still, one of the strangest chapters in history saw Australian troops deployed to Western Australia to assist local farmers with an overwhelming emu population.
Most have come to know this as the Emu Wars, but in 1932, it was simply a growing and aggravating nuisance to the farmers of Campion, Western Australia. Farmers already struggling to make ends meet after the rippling effects of The Great Depression now faced the threat of giant flightless birds ravaging their crops.
So, what were the results of this unique military action?
The answer may surprise some, but even with the abilities of a technologically advanced and far superior force, the deployment to quell the emu horde resulted in a failure.
For a month, the Army patrolled the countryside looking for emu, even enlisting the help of locals to lure them towards patiently waiting machine gun crews. But after the expenditure of nearly 10,000 rounds of ammunition, the military action only managed to produce roughly 950 dead emus—a dent compared to the estimated 20,000 thought to be out roaming Western Australia.
With the results of their actions seeing no significant improvement, the Army eventually left. It would appear that the Emu War was lost for the moment, giving those flightless birds free rein over farmers’ crops.
And with the Army gone, farmers still demanded the government develop a solution for emus and the destruction of their crops. Unfortunately, no such answer or solution would come immediately; however, years later, the government issued a paid bounty on emus that allowed farmers and locals to deal with the birds on their terms. The results proved very successful, with more than 50,000 emu bounties collected in less than half a year, thus bringing a triumphant end to the Emu Wars.
