I don't know whether it's possible to top the Grinch on the list of Christmas spoilers, but a couple of weeks ago a deer hunter in Pennsylvania definitely gave it a shot.
In fact, he gave it a shot in more ways than one. The hunter, who mercifully wasn't identified in the news account I read, didn't try to steal Christmas, but he did something almost as bad. He popped a cap on a reindeer.
For those of you not up on shooters' parlance, that doesn't mean he ornamented the reindeer with some holiday headgear. Nope, what this guy did was draw down on the poor unfortunate critter with his deer rifle and kill it graveyard dead. And you thought Ebenezer Scrooge was a spoil sport.
The hunter's offense could've been worse, though. At least the dearly departed reindeer wasn't pulling a sleigh.
What happened was that a couple of reindeer escaped from a Christmas display near Franklin Park, Pa. One of the animals was quickly recaptured, but the other eluded its pursuers and ran off into the woods.
Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Running into the woods during deer season in a state that fields as many hunters as Pennsylvania is definitely not the course of action you want to take if you're sporting a set of antlers on your head.
The hunter who shot the reindeer probably is in urgent need of some serious repair work on his public image, but he's not in any legal trouble - at least not yet. There are no laws on the books in Pennsylvania relating to reindeer, and you can't break a law that doesn't exist.
But the owner of the reindeer was reported to be considering a lawsuit, so the hunter's not totally in the clear. And if he happened to be the father of small children, there's no telling what they must think of him since he came home with Blitzen lashed to his car.
A somewhat similar case of mistaken identity occurred a few weeks ago in Eastern Kentucky, only in this instance the mistake-maker is not going to ge t off quite so lightly. The Kentucky hunter's name was made public, but I'm sure he's already suffered embarrassment enough without me identifying him again so let's just call him Joe Blow.
Anyway, what happened in Joe Blow's case was that he thought he'd killed the granddaddy of all trophy white-tail bucks, and without question the animal he'd shot was indeed a real whopper. In fact, it probably would've qualified as the granddaddy of all trophies if it had really been a white-tail.
What it was, though, was an elk, but it took Joe Blow a while to find that out. In fact, he was driving all around his hometown proudly showing off his prize until someone finally clued him in to fact that his supposed trophy of a lifetime was not what he thought it was.
A sadly deflated and sorely chastened Joe Blow went to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources and turned himself in. And unlike the reindeer in Pennsylvania, Kentucky does have laws on the books relating to elk.
Under the law, Joe Blow could be fined from $1,000 to $5,000, spend six months in jail, have his rifle and vehicle confiscated, lose his hunting privileges for three years and be assessed the replacement cost of the elk, which could run another $3,000 or so.
Poor old Joe's case hasn't come to trial yet, but since he turned himself in, it's unlikely he'll suffer a punishment quite as draconian as that outlined above. The penalty probably will be stiff enough, though, to assure that he'll be darn certain he knows the difference between an elk and a white-tail before he takes to the woods again.
Incidentally, in case you're wondering what elk are doing in Kentucky, several years ago the wildlife folks there began importing elk from the Far West and releasing them in Eastern Kentucky, where reclaimed strip mines offer thousands of acres of habitat that's suitable for elk.
The released elk have managed to prosper and multiply to the point where Kentucky is even allowing a limited amount of hunting for them. But Joe Blow wasn't among the lucky hunters who were issued elk permits.
My adopted home state of Tennessee also has a fair amount of reclaimed strip mine acreage, although not nearly as much as Kentucky, and last winter the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency brought in a shipment of elk from Canada and released them in what is known as the Royal Blue Wildlife Management Area, where there are a number of reclaimed mines. A similar release is planned in this winter.
It's too early yet to assess how the elk are going to fare over the long run in Tennessee. There's not nearly as much suitable habitat here, so it's unlikely that Tennessee's elk population will ever rival that of Kentucky.
But hopefully Tennessee hunters won't mistake them for white-tail deer.