Walk Through Paradise

'Walk Through Paradise' - 1986                                                                                                                                          snake

GUT SHOT.  A mishap in shooting an arrow toward a whitetail while bowhunting may potentially result in the worst possible scenario, that is, hitting the deer in its paunch or...a gut shot.  The mistake may be from lack of concentration, buck fever or an equipment failure.  The whitetail will eventually die, but it will take a fairly long time and unfortunately, it will suffer (as Alexander Hamilton did by Aaron Burr's bullet).  In order for the bowhunter to recover the deer, he must back away and come back to track his prey at least 6 hours later.  The whitetail, more than likely, will have bedded down and expired there.  If the hunter begins to track too early, he risks jumping the deer and perhaps never finding it.

A 'photographic' gut shot (of the worst kind)  happened to me today.  After finishing a roll of film and rewinding the 35mm cartridge, I opened my Leica to load another roll of film.  Unfortunately, my film did not rewind in the camera and my exposed film was ruined.  Gone forever are the moments of time and potentially good photographs that I could have posted on this blog.  After almost 40 years of shooting, I have only done this twice; once last year and now today.

Gut shots are terrible.