Quote from today’s Guardian newspaper, we have to forgive the reporter who accompanied the story with a picture of a moose!
Sport has a nasty way of reminding us we are getting old. Recently a Swedish friend told me how her father had slipped gradually into senility. “To be honest,” she said, “he was never the same once the government revoked his elk-hunting licence.”
The elk is a large and ungainly creature, with a body like a grand piano, gangling, knotty limbs and a cranium overweighted with antlers the shape of giant foam hands. Watching one rise from a recumbent position recalls visions of a drunk wrestling with a deckchair. Nobody in Scandinavia wants wounded elk wandering around, so, in order to hunt the great beasts, you have to take an annual marksmanship test to prove you can kill them with a single shot.
“When you have hunted elk since you were a young man, and then you fail that shooting exam, well … ” my friend shrugs glumly. It is plain what she means. Once they strip a person of his or her right to hunt elk the Swedish authorities are effectively handing them a bit of paper that says: “Now sit down, watch TV and wait for your coronary.”
