Shakedownsports.com

I’ve got good news for the crazy PETA activists who are fantasizing about Michael Vick being seriously injured by a dog—there is a group of dogs out there who have the necessary skills.

A man was injured when hunting dogs stepped on his gun. Officials with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources say 37-year-old James Harris of Tama, Iowa, was pheasant hunting with a group about 3 miles north of Grinnell when the accident happened. Officials say the group had shot a bird and when Harris went to retrieve it, he put his gun on the ground and crossed a fence. As he crossed the fence, hunting dogs stepped on his gun causing it to fire.

The grizzled outdoorsman took the bullet in his left leg and he should be able to recover. It’s obviously not the hunting trip he envisioned, but I guess it’s better than being shot by Dick Cheney.

I’ve never really considered hunting a sport (sitting in a tree and shooting animals seems like more of a hobby to me), but if hunters are in danger of actually encountering harm I might have to reconsider. After all, the possibility of serious injury is the only thing that makes people consider NASCAR a sport, right?

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Two weeks ago the Anchorage Daily News sports section published a photo of a young angler holding a beautiful freshly caught Russian River rainbow trout. What none of the paper’s editors realized is that Russian rainbow trout are a “catch-and-release” fish, and the man in the picture was holding the fish by its gills. Apparently that’s not the way to hold a fish you’re planning on releasing. Now there could be trouble for the man in the picture—if authorities can find out who he is.

The photo, it should be noted here, was not taken by a Daily News photographer. It arrived as an online submission to the “Nice Catch” gallery at www.adn.com. It was reported to have been snapped by a relative of the angler. It was picked from the gallery for use in the newspaper by a copy editor who’s not an expert in Alaska’s complex fishing regulations. It is now being investigated by the state because, as Brown noted, it is illegal to keep big Russian rainbows.

As a general rule, when you do something illegal it’s probably not a good idea to submit an incriminating photo of it to the local newspaper. The proper place to publish your incriminating photos is still Facebook.

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