When I was in High School, 3 foot blowguns were pretty popular with my friends and I - the ones that you blow into and shoot a 4 inch needle out the tip. We all became incredibly good with them, we could hit pop cans from 30 feet away, etc.

One day Nate Sels, Ray Terhune, and I were on the way to play a round of golf at Byron Hills when Ray decided that he needed a new blow gun. So we swung out to Discount Tool in Silvis to pick one up. Discount Tool was a weird place; it's about 1/2 car stereo equipment, 1/4 weapons, and 1/4 tools. So he got a 3 footer, some darts and we went golfing. Upon arrival, Ray was dying to play with his new gun so he took it out and put it in his golf bag - no big deal, there are plenty of trees, benches, etc to shoot on a course.

When heading up to hole 2 one of our friends (I think it was Danny Reuter) was working the greens and stopped over to chat with us. We hung out a bit, Ray showed off his blowgun, etc. Then we went on with our game...

Eventually we came up to hole 7, a short par 3 with a pond in between the Tee box and the green. We saw a duck in the pond and jokingly said, "Yo Ray! See if you can get that duck with your blowgun!" If you know Ray at all, he got all giddy and was determined to get that duck. At that time we were like, "No no no! just kidding dude, don't shoot it." Ignoring us, he pulled out his blowgun and stuck a dart right in it's side - an excellent shot, but totally uncalled for. The duck started freaking out. It tried pulling the dart out with it's bill, quacked a lot, and wouldn't fly away. I felt pretty bad, and was even more worried about losing my membership to the course - but it was definitely hilarious. I mean, Ray just hunted one of the weakest, most defenseless animals ever... with a blowgun. So we have this duck sitting right in the middle of the pond with a big orange tipped dart sticking out of it after we just showed an employee the dart gun - brilliant.

Later, on hole 8, we decided to hunt some more, but this time it was just for a frog along the side of another pond. I didn't mind shooting this one because who cares about frogs, there are hundreds of them on the course. So I took aim and the exact second I shot, the frog jumped and the dart stuck him RIGHT in the spine - it died instantly. So the frog is flying through the air with its arms all sprawled out and a dart stuck through his back. Then it slapped the water and just floated there. It was incredible.

The next day I went back to the course, I can't remember if it was with Nate or Joey, but we saw the animal rescue league on hole 7 saving the duck. So the duck was OK, but I think Ray was banned from the course for the year.

8:54 am

2:46 pm