The Unmuddled Mathematician

It’s All in the Wrist

By Chris Coray, The Unmuddled Mathematician
 

Fair Warning:  Do not read this just prior to eating a meal or if you have a queasy stomach.  Ann, have the Muddled Male read this first and decide if it’s OK for you.

I used to love to hunt.  Not big game, but birds.  It was in my blood and as fall approached my excitement level would rise every day.  I still like to go hunting but have a very hard time killing.  A camera is my preferred weapon.

 

The first bird hunt of the year was in Wyoming and we hunted sage grouse, also called sage hens.  We’d set up a camp on the high Wyoming prairie, a whole bunch of us eager to begin a new hunting year.  I think the biggest and most beautiful moon I’ve ever seen was from a small tent on that prairie; but on to the story.  In those days the birds were numerous and the hunting really good.  To properly care for the game for good eating required that the birds should be in large part cleaned (field dressed) within minutes of shooting.  The trick was learning the correct wrist snap.  A small incision, then holding the bird firmly by its wings and bracing a finger against the back , followed by a swift downward motion completed with a sharp wrist snap would cause almost all of the entrails to be thrown out on the ground.  No blood, no mess, bird cleaned, on to the next sagebrush patch. 

One year a long-time duck hunting pal of ours asked if he could join us on our Wyoming trip, bringing his two boys.  Sure, he was more than welcome.  He was actually the manager of the US Steel plant in Geneva.  His only issue with the sage hens was the cleaning, about which he was really queasy.  For example he didn’t ever clean his own ducks, instead paying someone 25 cents a bird. We had given him instruction about the method required with sage hens but I’m not sure it sunk in. He knew that this might be a little tough.

Well, there we were, marching across the sagebrush flats in the early morning.  It wasn’t too long before a flock of grouse jumped up in front of our pal.  He shot a sage hen.  There it was, on the ground, surrounded by his two boys who jumped up and down and excitedly asked him, “What now, dad, what do we do now?”  I was about 40 yards away and heard and watched all that followed.  Knowing that he was supposed to act quickly, our pal bent down, picked up the bird, made the required small incision with a small pocket knife, and then had a mental brain freeze as he forgot all the rest we had told him.

He grasped the bird correctly but then moved his whole arm in what I would call a great circle around the earth.  His wrist remained straight and locked and the bird was tracking in a 5 foot diameter circular arc, and he never wrist-snapped toward the ground.  The speed through the arc was great enough that the (warning-warning-warning) entrails began to come out, but not all at once and not at the ground.  Instead the bird seemed to be growing a tail of ever increasing length as the circular arc continued.  This tail, which wasn’t really a tail at all, flew around until it reached a length of about 7 feet and then wrapped itself around his head and face, sort of like a hot spaghetti wrap. 

Then it got ugly.  He realized from his senses of touch, sight, and smell that his entire face was wrapped with what had been the interior of a sage hen 2 minutes earlier.  He lay down on the ground and repetitively hurled his breakfast and everything else in his stomach out on the ground, making an awful sound.  I got there as quickly as I could, cleaned him and the situation up, and asked if he wanted to go on.  Nope, he was done, as in really done.  No more sage hen hunting for him, ever.

I repeat, it’s all in the wrist.