Challenge #04927-M178: A-Hunting They Will Go

There are ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now. Two Game Wardens, Seven Hunters, and a Pure Bred Guernsey Cow
-- Deathshead419

They say, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And it's a very apropos statement on the Terran Colony of Libertaria. Where every man is an island and all the homes are bulletproof.

They need to be bulletproof, because every spring is hunting season.

Where the Real Men go out with their weapons, camping gear, and vehicles the size of busses to secure meat for their families. Enough to last them the remainder of the year. The fact that there's the potential for trophies is allegedly a mere incentive.

Let's just say that a lot of the decor there involves horns, antlers, or claws, and leave it at that.

There's more than a few who go beyond. Who have the philosophy that anything stupid enough to get shot is meat. And that happens to be legal in Libertaria because nobody there believes that they are stupid enough to get shot.

Spoilers: the bullets don't care how smart you are.

Wilson stuck close to the trees, moving carefully because all the other idiots with guns would shoot at anything that moved. He had a very specific target.

A deer or two for his woman. A bear to feed his son to strengthen him up. Thereafter, anything else that strayed into his sights. One shot, one kill.

He could hear the crack and caterwauling of the sort of fellows who were there to have a good time. Fools like that were doomed to go hungry by halfway through the winter. They weren't taking things as seriously as Wilson was.

They were scaring off the prey.

Therefore they were prey.

Wilson crept along the underbrush, blending in with the plants around him as he followed the noise.

Five yahoos. Two boys just old enough to enjoy their first beer. Loud. Obnoxious. Shooting at anything that moved. Drunk. If they had a bag, it was full of empty beer cans.

Wilson drew a bead on the loudest one. He was older. He likely had a woman. Family. Not just sons, but daughters that had to be protected. For a moment, Wilson wondered how those women would fend for themselves once their men were long pork in Wilson's freezer.

Their fault for choosing the wrong men.

Wilson pulled the trigger.

[Photo by Kony on Unsplash]

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