As I learned from reading a fellow native Kansan's Jan. 8, 2018, Hays Post newspaper article, good news also sometimes runs in threes. It all has a lot to do with timing.
By Karen Madorin
After every rifle season, lucky hunters celebrate their success stories, recounting details of the hunt to their friends and anyone else who will listen. Over the years, I've heard many a tale about how one little turn of good fortune transformed an ordinary hunt into the extraordinary hunt.
I doubt that any of the hunters involved in the following three tales, though, realize how lucky they are...how fate protected them from permanently injuring others, or worse. The first tale involved neighbors who lived west of us. The wife came home around dusk the first Wednesday of rifle deer season to discover a high-powered rifle bullet had shattered the family-room bay window. This room happened to be where her grandchild played and napped when visiting Grandma.
The bullet-shattered glass shards exploded through the room so thoroughly the insurance company replaced furniture, carpeting and window dressings, since splinters couldn't be totally removed. Thinking about what could have happened had any human, let alone a small child, been in that room sickens me.
The second story involved a friend who stored his bass boat in his mother's barn. Come warm weather, he prepared his boat for the upcoming fishing season when he discovered a problem with the engine. It wouldn't run because a high-powered rifle slug was lodged in it. After doing a little detective work, he, too, discovered an errant bullet had whistled through the barn wall, through the boat hull, and into the engine. Once again, a lucky hunter avoided injuring a human, though he or she wreaked havoc on my friend's fishing season.
Historically, bad luck comes in threes. Perhaps good luck does also. The third story involved several pieces of good fortune stitched together. Just a few weeks ago, another neighbor traveled much of December and early January. Upon his return, he invited my husband to his barn to show him a bullet hole that hadn't been there when our neighbor left in December.
On a mission to discover how a bullet hole exited a locked barn, the two began searching. What they found made them realize another rifle hunter narrowly avoided tragedy. This individual had to have fired a rifle, apparently coming over a nearby hill. We assume he or she aimed at a deer in an alfalfa field and missed. The lead pierced the barn wall, passed through a wooden plank propped against it, struck the corner of a wheat drill that split the still moving projectile, sending both fragments through the front door toward gas tanks in front of the barn. Our friend frequently parks his pickup in that location, so it was fortunate he was traveling when the incident occurred.
This is not an essay against hunting. This sport is a wonderful way to enjoy nature, learn more about our place in it, and fill the freezer. This is an essay that celebrates some hunters' good fortune in that they did not kill or injure another human when they failed to follow the most basic tenet of hunter safety: Know where your bullet is going before you pull the trigger. High-powered rifles make it possible to shoot a bullet an average of 3,500 feet per second. Those using them have a responsibility to know where the bullet will end up if it misses the target.
Somewhere, someone is bemoaning a lost deer. Instead, that hunter needs to celebrate not ending up a statistic in the back of the hunter-education manual.
Native Kansan Karen Madorin (pictured at top) is a writer and retired teacher who loves sharing stories about places, people, critters, plants, food, and history of the High Plains. I sincerely thank her and the Hays Post for allowing me to reprint this article.
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