Practical hunting joke

October 20, 2007 9:03 PM

What is the name of the practical joke you play on people, where you pretend to take them xyz hunting, and you get them to go wait somewhere while you "flush" the xyz out. But you actually just like...go home.
posted by aleahey to human relations (30 comments total)

Snipe hunt, or, sometimes, snape hunt.
posted by Flunkie at 9:05 PM on October 20, 2007

Snipe Hunting?
posted by princesspathos at 9:05 PM on October 20, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

It's definitely a snipe hunt.
posted by chrisamiller at 9:06 PM on October 20, 2007

The idea that this might be a snipe hunt is cruel. Snipes are inoffensive, and unremarkable as game targets. Any person so inclined, equipped only with a shotgun, can take snipes at will, in their home ranges.

I think you're really talking about daytime white truffle hunts.
posted by paulsc at 9:19 PM on October 20, 2007

Nthing snipe hunt.
posted by occhiblu at 10:07 PM on October 20, 2007

Snipe hunt. Don't forget to bang those sticks together!
posted by ColdChef at 10:13 PM on October 20, 2007

Yep, snipe hunting.
posted by janell at 10:18 PM on October 20, 2007

I'd call it betrayal, emotional cruelty and being a complete prick. But then, I'm a sensitive little flower.
posted by flabdablet at 10:30 PM on October 20, 2007 [13 favorites has favorites]

I always figured the idea of the behavior you describe (which is called snipe hunting) was not to leave the other person without a trace, but to get them alone so you could both have some make-out time.

Nowadays that would just seem weird, I think.
posted by Avenger at 10:48 PM on October 20, 2007

I'll wait right here till you guys figure it out. Just come and get me when you're done, ok?
posted by The Deej at 10:55 PM on October 20, 2007

It was definitely called snipe hunting when I was a kid. I was surprised to find out that snipe are real birds; they're little bitty coastal birds that do this funny bobbing motion.

But you certainly don't have to 'snipe hunt' on the coast; my first hunt was well inland. Our ritual was to roam the underbrush, calling, "Snipe snipesnipesnipe!" You have to get the intonation, you see, just exactly right or they won't come out of hiding. Well-camouflaged birds, they are.

Nobody left anyone behind, though. It was just to get everyone out doing something completely useless for an hour or two, and then snicker at their ignorance later. It sounds like some people get into active cruelty with it, but we were just a little annoying.... impish, not mean.
posted by Malor at 11:38 PM on October 20, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Frequently part of scouts. We just took off and ate snacks while the older scouts ditched us then went back to camp and acted crestfallen.
posted by craniac at 11:38 PM on October 20, 2007

It's also a little bit like cow tipping.
posted by acoutu at 3:13 AM on October 21, 2007

In the first episode of Doug, they called it "nematoad bagging."
posted by grouse at 3:51 AM on October 21, 2007

Haggis hunting. Only works with tourists.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:03 AM on October 21, 2007

Definitely snipe hunting.

When I was in college, my dorm-mates took me snipe hunting while we were on a camping trip. We all drove out to the middle of a field where they left me standing with a pillowcase and a stick in the field at nighttime in the middle of nowhere, when they ran off and drove back to the camp. So I went to the other side of the field from where they left me and hid in the long grass. When they came back to look for me, they got out of the car and started walking through the field, calling for me. I slithered my way back to the car (which they had left running) and drove off, leaving them in the middle of a field at night!

Ha! Who's the sucker now!
posted by triggerfinger at 4:19 AM on October 21, 2007 [6 favorites has favorites]

There was an episode of Cheers where the gang took Frasier on a Snipe hunt, so that spread the word of the snipe hunt pretty far.
posted by saffry at 6:04 AM on October 21, 2007

My summer camp had an annual snipe hunt for the new campers, which it took to entertaining extremes. The kids would run through the woods with pillowcases to catch the snipes. The counselors would beat the bushes with sticks, then surreptitiously throw two rocks into the pillowcase. They'd then tell the camper to keep shaking the case so the snipe wouldn't escape. The clicking of the rocks hitting together was the snipe's call. The camper would run the bag of snipes to the dining hall. The next morning, we'd have snipe pancakes (pancakes with chicken) for breakfast.

This was one of two elaborate methods the camp had for getting its campers to clear away rocks from the grounds. The other was Gold Rush, where they'd spray paint certain rocks gold, and set us off picking them up. We'd haul them to the weigh station and get some amount of "money" to spend at the camp store. It was only much later that I figured out the real motivation behind the event. Still, it was loads of fun.
posted by schoolgirl report at 7:13 AM on October 21, 2007

In France, we had dahu hunting.

A dahu is a nocturnal animal that lives on mountain or hill slopes, so it has shorter legs on one side (right or left).
When in flat country, dahus have no choice but to walk along ditches.

Wikipedia says that a dahu is as big as a goat, but in my youth we believed it was smaller, roughly the size of a hare or a jackalope.

So hunting the dahu in a plain means having someone wait holding a big potatoe bag in a ditch while all the gang goes away making noises to chase the dahu right back into the bag. The general idea is to let someone wait all night while the pranksters have fun laughing and drinking somewhere else. But we only participated in collective fun and never went farther than a few hundred yards from the catcher/hunter.

Of course, on a mountainside the idea is to make the dahu turn around and roll down the slope... where the catcher is waiting with a bag.

The best dahu hunt I remember was on the Great Dune of Pyla during summer vacations. We had as many noobs banging on pots and pans as catchers waiting near the tree line. We were maybe 20 or 30 and surely half drunk. The night was dark and at one moment pranksters started shouting that they had caught one and threw some bag around. People screamed, ran and rolled in the sand all over the dune. Great fun was had by all and afterward a few noobs would swear that they had seen the dahu.
posted by bru at 7:47 AM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

We sent kids on a Nauga hunt. After all, where do you think Naugahyde comes from? Someones gotta find 'em and kill 'em.
posted by cccorlew at 8:40 AM on October 21, 2007

Recall the malignant version of this trick played on Dustin Hoffman (and Susan George) in Peckinpah's Straw Dogs.
posted by jamjam at 9:52 AM on October 21, 2007

In the Navy we'd send the new guys out for a bucket of prop wash or 50 feet of flightline.

Same idea :)

reg
posted by legotech at 1:37 PM on October 21, 2007

When my husband taught SCUBA diving, he and his fellow instructors/friends would sometimes send new divers into a dive shop to ask for a bottle of wet suit warmer.

Wet suit warmer is... well... yellow, and it doesn't come in a bottle. :-D
posted by lambchop1 at 2:15 PM on October 21, 2007

The wikipedia article for Snipe Hunt has a long list of fun fool's errands for various fields. Such as, for restaurants:

-Asking the trainee to wash the dirty water
-Asking the trainee to mop the freezer (wet mops like to stick to the cold metal)
posted by yeti at 2:53 PM on October 21, 2007

Good link, yeti, and it mentions a variation familiar from my scouting days, only then it was known as a left-handed smoke turner.

But this all reminds me of a comment by crunchland to one of my earliest queries --

it's one of those jokes... you know, the kind that aren't funny.

But of course people perpetrating rites of initiation disagree.
posted by Rash at 4:05 PM on October 21, 2007

There are other funny practical joke errands where, for example, a new guy in the air force might be sent to get a "bucket of prop wash", or a new mechanic might be sent to get "a round tuit", a novice camper might be sent to get a "left-handed smoke shifter" etc.
posted by LobsterMitten at 6:09 PM on October 21, 2007

Lefthanded screwdriver is a pretty hot one too. /derail off.
posted by TomMelee at 6:14 PM on October 21, 2007

I always figured the idea of the behavior you describe (which is called snipe hunting) was not to leave the other person without a trace, but to get them alone so you could both have some make-out time.

Isn't that called watching the grunion run?
posted by goml at 10:08 AM on October 22, 2007

Watching the submarine races.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:28 PM on October 22, 2007

Also, check out KaleCo joke auto supplies, for "blinker fluid", a "710 cap", and other necessaries.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:32 PM on October 22, 2007