Oh Deer: Hunting Accident Dings Trib Reporter

By JoshMogerman in News on Feb 26, 2011 9:00PM

Add the Trib’s Barbara Brotman to the list of hundreds of Americans hurt in hunting accidents every year. No, she wasn’t shot and killed by food writer Monica Eng as the two culminated the Trib’s season of venison fascination with a deer hunting trip in Carroll County. But, Brotman did take quite a shot the first time she squeezed the trigger with Bambi in her sites sights:

The gun felt like a cannon going off in my hands. Then something hit me in the eye. My eyeglasses snapped in half. There was blood streaming down my face.

I had forgotten Spangler's warning. I had put my eye too close to the scope and hadn't braced the butt of the gun against my body. The recoil had hit me full on the eye.

Six stitches in the emergency room later, I had cemented my spot in the ranks of hunters who get "scope bite."

I had missed the deer. And I was sorry I had.

Brotman needn’t have gone all the way to the western edge of Illinois to bash in her skull; there is an out of control deer population much closer to home. Officials in Will County have been grappling with exploding deer numbers and an outbreak of chronic wasting disease for months. After exhausting other options, the area’s Forest Preserves have turned to sharpshooters to cull the deer. To ensure public safety, firing has occurred only in the evening, conducted solely by tested marksmen (which would likely exclude Brotman). So, suburban teenagers be aware: McKinley Woods in Channahon, Lockport Prairie, Messenger Woods in Homer Glen, Sandridge Savanna/Kankakee Sands in the Braidwood/Wilmington area and Goodenow Grove/Plum Valley in Beecher are all off limits for nighttime make-out sessions. Wait...no culling in Kildeer?

Don’t get us wrong. We've got no problem with hunting---it is occasionally the only tool to keep suburban deer populations in check; though that opinion is not shared by a lot of folks in Will County. Truth be told, we prefer introducing more coyotes! We just hope that if the Brotman-Eng sharpshooting team manages to bag a buck in the spring deer hunt, they will share some of the bounty. Venison sausage, yum.