The dread malady named in the title occurs most frequently with neophyte hunters, often on their first hunt, and appears when they first see - or more particularly, when they first try to shoot - a game animal.

Many hunters who snipe their deer from elevated stands seem to believe that elevation alone makes worrying about wind superfluous. (Those who don’t know enough to worry about wind direction and force anywhere, anytime, may stop reading right here, because what follows will probably only confuse them.)

Few speakers of American English realize how many of our expressions can be traced back to firearms or their use. When we say a politician was a “flash in the pan,” for example, most of us have no idea of what a flash in the pan really is.