Claim: In an effort to protect the deer population, PETA has taken to dressing deer in orange hunters' vests. Consequently, local hunters are having a very easy time drawing a bead on these animals and downing them. A sporting goods store offers rewards for the returned vests and a
Status: False.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2002]
If you are familiar with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), then you are aware of the fact they will do almost anything to protect animals. This year's efforts to save Ohio's deer from the annual statewide gun season has backfired. For safety's sake, hunters in Ohio are required by law to display at least Capitalizing on the fact that hunters do not usually shoot orange, PETA recently bulk purchased blaze orange vests and have been affixing them to live-trapped deer in Youngstown suburbs. According to PETA spokesperson Katie Reese, a total of Youngtown entrepreneur Guy Lockey, of Guy's Outdoors has spit in the face of PETA by offering rewards for the returned vests this week. Hunters who can successfully bag a vested deer can pay $5 for random and biggest animal awards. As of today, 308 of the vests had already been recorded as bagged with most of the hunters registering for Ohio's statewide gun season is open to shotguns only and is |
Origins: Although the above purports to be an Associated Press wire service article, it's not — searches of wire service archives fail to turn it
up.
Although the piece began circulating on the Internet in January 2002, it's a hoax all the way down. Though People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has certainly engaged in many loopy schemes over the course of its history, decking out deer in orange hunting vests hasn't been any of them. There are no orange-vested deer, thus there are no hunters collecting a bounty on their apparel. More importantly, there is no chance of some trigger-happy yahoo's mistaking another hunter — one clad in an orange vest — for a similarly attired deer, resulting in his bagging a Buck (or a Jim or a John) instead of a buck.
Yet what would a hoax be without someone's falling for it? On
It's deer season out in Ohio, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is trying to protect the animals by adorning them with bright orange vests of the kind that hunters use to alert each other not to shoot. PETA boasted it has succeeded in dressing more than
During the next evening's broadcast,
And finally, we've picked up on a wire item last time that said that PETA had outfitted
Barbara "PETA panned" Mikkelson
Last updated: 29 October 2007
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