Two Bucks Drown At Chicago Course. I Drowned Ten Bucks on our 18th A Couple Weeks Ago

Someone at the Chicago Tribune has a wicked sense of humor:

2 Bucks Found Drowned At Golf Course

Apparently someone forgot to warn the deer around Wood River's Belk Park Golf Course about the water hazards.

"Course personnel found the bodies of two large whitetail bucks floating in the pond near Hole 16 Thursday morning."

That's tragic for the deer, I suppose, but probably the result of their annual mating cycle that takes place every autumn. In their annual "rut" bucks battle for supremacy and the 'rights' to the does, sometimes with fatal results. If one thinks that the forest is always a peaceful place, they aren't watching very carefully. It's a life and death war for survival out there, every day and every night. It's just the circle of life. Since a golf course is really a proxy for a wilderness meadow, quite often bordered by forests, it's a natural that some of that spills over into the pleasant fairways.

This time of year in NC, deer are everywhere and they are quite restless, making driving virtually anywhere a potential place for a deer to run in front of your vehicle and cause damage to not only vehicle but also potentially life and limb. Even on golf courses, one has to be quite careful, not because a deer might run in front of your cart but instead because it is possible to be stuck between a buck and where he wants to run towards. That is, to paraphrase Martha Stewart, 'not a good thing.' Why? The buck will have absolutely no qualms about running you over and goring you in the process. It has happened before and will almost certainly happen again.

Also, I liked the wordplay of the author's saying "two bucks drowned. " Bet that plenty of bucks have drowned there, just the green kind that lives in our wallets. I did the same thing here on a Nassau press a couple of weeks ago. Needing to birdie the tough 18th, I hit a lovely arching draw from the tee box. Unfortunately it was pulled just enough for my ball to clatter into the lake after bouncing a time or two...drowning ten bucks in the process. The only difference is that nothing was floating in that lake, save for my pride.

Ah well, another example of life imitating golf.