94

While talking, you've been preparing to fire. A head shot is the easiest and most likely to be successful. However, that will destroy the horn and make it impossible to do a scientific study of it. A chest shot will solve that, if you make it. However, they're such remarkable beasts that you question whether you want to shoot them at all.

You raise your weapon and take aim, sighting on the muzzle of the lead dinosaur. Your quarry rises on powerful back legs before uttering a siren-loud honk.

Despite that, you keep your cool as you draw back on the trigger.

Bam! Direct hit! With a scream, it goes down, thrashing, tripping a couple of the others. They scream too. That spooks the whole troop. With banshee shrieks, they disperse in all directions. One stumbles into your hunting blind, sending you diving for cover (such as it…isn't). They're gone in a flash.

You rise to your knees. Your friend does too, shaking and pale.

"You OK?" you ask, looking her over carefully.

"Think so," she replies. "You?"

"Kind of shook up."

"Yeah, me too. Good shooting, Guth." Brett switches on the safety and prepares to call it a day.

After snapping some photos with your trophy, you set about detaching the beast's head. It's about the size and weight of your torso, which means a major effort to lug it back to the Land Rover. So what? As you sweat and groan beneath the load, you keep thinking about their horn toots. If you could have small replicas made of that shape and get them mass-produced, they'd be more popular with kids than kazoos and vuvuzelas combined.

Yikes