Eleven THE LATEST FROM PIPESTONE
This piece lampoons the poor hunting and shooting skills of an inexperienced client. He fails to attain Tex’s approval because he shoots the goat repeatedly after it is clearly dead. The penalty for the hunter’s failure to embody proper mountain masculinity is measured by the ruined hide, “mulligan meat” (shot up too much for anything but stew, mulligatawny) and only one intact horn. The hunter has thus lost both a good trophy and the use of the meat, which contravenes a crucial part of Tex’s hunting ethos.
Tex apportions some of the blame to himself, however, for having given the hunter the impression that he thought his gun, a 30.30 (a medium-calibre rifle) was not much of a “man’s gun.” This tips us to the fact that manhood is indeed at stake in this exercise. Revealingly, manhood turns out not to be about firepower or raw machismo—it is about skill, just measure, and restraint.
—AG