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One of the occupational hazards of being an editor is that too often you have to eat your words. Sometimes they are candystripe, another time venison. Catsup doesn't help change the bitter flavor, either.
October is the season when you can hunt deer in Minnesota with bow and arrow. We always take pictures of the first half dozen Robin Hoods who return from the greenwood with a haunch of roebuck, then close it off. The novelty is over by then. Also, dainty readers make
cracks about the gruesome photos of glassy deer eyes looking at them beside a smiling hunter.
One young man was turned away recently, though a short item was run about his success, and his disappointment was great. Relatives and friends called to lobby for the picture, but we stood our
ground.
"Our policy," I explained, "is no more deer pictures shot with bow and arrow in 1973."
Today, I have to eat those words. Here you see a picture of Douglas Sandmann with a deer he got with a bow and arrow in the valley. The reason for the flip flop is that Sandmann got a rare deer. It is news; not that Sandmann got it. It would have been news if Ed Meidl shot it.
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HUNTING near Cambria, Sandmann saw a deer running toward him out of
a cornfield. He missed it from 30 yards with his first arrow, but got it with the second a little closer. The buck had a rack
of horns something between a moose and a caribou.
Sandmann brought the mystery to town and called a game warden. Dave
Olson of Fairmont came to New Ulm and identified the animal as a Damhert Fallow deer.
He had an encyclopedia, which explained the deer's "range was originally the Mediterrean region of southern Europe and Asia Minor. It has been widely introduced and is now found in the wild state throughout most parts of Western Europe, the western Ukraine, the Baltic countries, Great Britain and in a few areas in the United States." Some Bambilands have this deer in captivity. One so equipped is supposed to be at Park Rapids.
"It's possible," said Sandmann,"this deer got away from a game farm up north and worked its way south."
If anyone knows about this, call Sandmann. He's a cop. Dale Selby of Nicollet is mounting the head.
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NOW that we are behind by a head, let's take the candystripe disflavor mentioned at the start. Several years ago we declined to take a picture of all the candystripers at Union Hospital.
"A mob scene," I explained to Mrs. Milton Kaiser, their advisor.
Friday, page 1, this newspaper, we ran a picture of 90 boys leaping off in a cross-country race.
"Not going to run that," said a newsroom kibitzer. "It's a mob scene."
And it was. But with the picture of one of the 90 winning the race, a picture teamed up on the page, it made a story. It was different, a big beginning and a single end.
But no matter how you spread the mustard, some of those pearls of editorial wisdom are hard to swallow.
New Ulm Daily Journal, Oct. 28, 1973