I’ve never shot a deer before. My reasoning is one percent that deer are cute, and 99 percent that ground beef is $3 at the supermarket two blocks from my home. Why go hunting when the saps at Ralph’s will do all the dirty work for slave wages?

As Scrooge McDuck always said, “Work smarter, not harder.”

I can understand why people like hunting. The early mornings, the bitter cold, the endless eerie silence, the long bouts of waiting that make an hour seem like a month, the wood ticks, the lack of toilets or ice cream sundaes, the asking of permission from strangers to shoot living things in their yard, the plentiful cases of Keystone Light.

Wait, that sounds horrible. On second thought, I don’t understand hunting at all. Are people who hunt complete nutjobs? I mean, I hate people a lot, but I still wouldn’t sit in the freezing cold of a glorified treehouse for an entire weekend just to avoid others. There are simpler paths to solitude. I usually just angrily yell at people until they can’t stand being near me anymore. It works well, and allows me a lot of free time for playing video games. I’ve beaten The Last of Us six times!

I guess hunting could still be worthwhile as a manly achievement, but there are plenty of other manly things I can do that don’t require me to drag a warm corpse through the woods. I could eat a Cheeto that has been on the floor for more than five seconds. That’s pretty manly. I could pay someone to build a shed and then brag about how I did it myself. If pushed, I could switch from diet iced tea to a non-diet raspberry flavor. All of these activities are extremely manly, and none of them can be ruined by accidentally cutting open a deer’s buttsack, or whatever that thing is that ruins deer meat.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against hunting. I’m not a big animal rights guy. I once watched one of those PETA videos showing cows being slaughtered, and I paused it halfway through because I was getting hungry and wanted to go to McDonald’s. My dog and I have a General Vegan Agreement that we won’t eat each other in times of food shortage or a worldwide zombie apocalypse, but judging by how often he tries to bite my hands when I pet him, I’m slightly suspicious that he won’t hold up his end of the bargain.

I’m also not vegetarian or vegan. Quite the opposite. I hate vegetables. The other day I was coerced into eating at some vegan-friendly restaurant, and those bastards put little bits of cilantro in everything. Cilantro! The one plant that tastes like drain cleaner! It was about as enjoyable as finding pieces of broken glass in my food every few bites. That cilantro stuff is sneaky like herpes. You don’t know it’s there until it’s already in your mouth.

Authentic-style Mexican restaurants do the same thing. You’d think they’d notice how unreasonably Caucasian I am when I walk through the door, but no luck. Cilantro every time. Every time! Cilantro!

I can handle eating small amounts of lettuce. That’s about it. I’ll gag a lot if there isn’t a burger or a half gallon of salad dressing included with it, but that seems like a natural reflex for someone who microwaves hot dogs five out of seven days each week. I will also eat the shredded cheese from salads. I’m not sure if that counts as a vegetable. Sometimes I think it’s shredded cheese but end up realizing it’s thinly sliced carrot sticks, at which point I spit them out and feed them to the dog.

I don’t think this is making me sound more manly. What the hell were we talking about again? Deer? Good lord.

I’ve never tried to shoot a deer, but I’m pretty sure I could, especially if the deer was a real dick. Maybe the deer micturated upon someone’s mother or ate a stash of prized chili fries. Perhaps the deer spoiled the incredibly boring ending to Boardwalk Empire, a television program you briefly considered watching but never did. That particular deer would deserve to die, just as would any of my closest friends or family.

So I’m not against shooting deer. I just think it would be more fun if we could punch them. A lot. And then shoot them. I would also not be opposed to slipping them a roofie, removing their pants, and leaving them in a Denny’s parking lot. But perhaps I’m just a bit more into hunting than most people.