Golfer Tripp Isenhour Faces Charges for Intentionally Killing Bird With Golf Shot

This story is stranger than fiction: PGA Tour Pro Tripp Isenhour intentionally killed a bird by hitting golf balls at it and now faces charges for animal cruelty.

Apparently Isenhour, another in a long line of professional golfers I have never really heard of, is good enough—or at least popular enough—to warrant his own TV special: an episode of "Shoot Like A Pro."

Man, if ever the name of that program was appropriate, right? Geez. "Shoot Birds Like A Pro" is more like it.

Anyway, Isenhour kept getting frustrated at this red-tailed hawk that was squawking about 300 yards away. Seems they had to do multiple takes because the bird was so loud.

Don't you hate that? When you're filming a golf special and a large bird keeps screaming so loudly that you have to do take after take after take? Me too.

So Tripp (real name: John Henry—yeah, I'd go by Tripp too) got so upset that he started hitting golf balls toward the hawk. Of course, being so far away, he didn't come close.

But later, after they'd changed locations for another shot, the bird was only about 75 yards away and still making too much noise for nature-hating Isenhour. He reportedly said to the crew around him, "I'll get him now,” and fired another few shots at the bird, one of which struck it in the head. The hawk fell to the ground with blood coming out of its nostrils and died.

You can't make this stuff up people.

Now, there are many angles to this story that I want to cover.

First, this is a horrible shame. I have bird-watching relatives who would be crushed by this news. The red-tailed hawk is a protected migratory species, hence the criminal charges. This guy will—and should—face all kinds of scorn and resentment for this action. No question about it. All humor aside, it's sad that this man killed this animal in such a needless and cruel way.

That being said, good grief on the blame-game people. From the article:

"He just kept saying how he didn't think he could have hit it, which I think is a stupid thing for a PGA Tour golfer to say," said Jethro Senger, a sound engineer at the shoot. "He can put a ball in a hole from hundreds of yards away, and here he is hitting line drives at something that's, I don't know, a couple hundred feet away?"

What?! Are you freaking kidding me? Jethro has clearly never played golf. Exactly how easy does he think it is to make a hole-in-one, let alone a hole-out from "hundreds of yards away?"

Pick a target 75 yards away from the tee, make that target about a foot tall and about six inches wide, and ask every pro golfer in the world to hit it with a golf shot. I think you'd be lucky to have even one of them hit the target with their ball, but Jethro makes it sound like golfers are Special Forces Snipers, for Pete's sake. It's so very tempting to make a joke linking Jethro's name to his ignorance, but I won't.

Oh crap, guess I just did.

Call it what it was: a lucky shot. A tragic, unexpected, lucky shot. However evil you think Isenhour is for this act of animal cruelty, there is no way on God's green earth that he really thought he could hit that bird.

Also, if you read that article carefully, you will see that Jethro here, who is bashing the tar out of Tripp, was the sound engineer on the shoot. A couple sentences later, the article says that none of the 15 crew members—Jethro the sound engineer included—intervened. But it does say they all felt bad later for not having intervened.

Awwww. Isn't that cute? They felt bad. Good for them. I'll tell you why they didn't intervene: They didn't think Tripp had a chance in Hades of hitting that bird, that's why.

Isenhour has officially been charged with cruelty to animals and killing a migratory bird. Imagine the job interviews he'll have in the future:

"Have you ever been convicted of a crime?"

"Well, one time, yes."

"Oh yeah? What was the charge?"

"Oh, you know...killing a migratory bird...the usual stuff."

I presume he'll end up with quite a hefty fine—Florida officials have already gone back to the course and dug up the dead bird for evidence—which is reminiscent of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry and Kramer dig up the neighbor's parrot in the pet cemetery in order to retrieve the key from the bird's stomach.

How many times in your life can you say you dug up a dead bird and had a good reason for it? Not many, I'm guessing...but maybe that's just me.

Oh, and it's also tough to talk about this story without remembering the amazing and powerful Randy Johnson who famously killed a bird with a perfectly-timed fast ball.  

Anyway, golfers everywhere should take heed. Any errant shot into the woods could end up killing wildlife, and you could end up facing charges. Certainly don't go aiming for birds as the genius Isenhour did. That has now been proven to have been a very bad decision.