Journalists, like cops, get to see people at their worst. This holds true even in sporting journalism, as I am reminded all too frequently.

Case in point: The boys at VeloNews forward me a letter to the editor from a Denver reader who is beside himself over a photo in the December issue of single-speeder/mountain biker Ross Schnell posing with an elk he has killed. The pic, more typical of a hook-and-bullet mag’ than a bike rag, illustrates a Robbie Stout training piece about doing something other than cycling in the off-season.

Now, I don’t know Ross Schnell from mach schnell. Maybe he hunts for meat, not trophies. I don’t hunt at all, unless you count stalking the wily skinless chicken breast at Vitamin Cottage-Natural Grocers. However, I know a few folks who do, reasoning that free-range elk is a whole lot tastier and better for you than feedlot beef.

But our reader apparently has Ross Schnell’s number, based on a single photograph. He is an “assclown,” a “jackass redneck,” a “semi pro CO dolt with a tiny dick,” an idiot and a coward. Our reader adds: “Want sport? Try to hunt me, I’ll not only come after your hillbilly ass, I’ll come after your family — then you can hear all about the terror, pain and torture a hunted animal experiences from your kids or wife.”

A little casual research using our reader’s name and location, e-mail address and forum handle leads me to believe he is a vegetarian. If so, he makes a very poor advocate for the moral superiority of gatherers over hunters. I’m not sure the Buddha would be down with going after someone’s family, even a poorly hung hillbilly’s, with a heart full of righteous indignation and a fistful of deadly zucchini.

What’s amusing about the letter, other than the mental image of its purple-visaged author, is the clear sense that our reader is absolutely certain that he is correct about the evils of hunting, when he is mistaken about so much else. He got the author’s name wrong, calling him “Robbie Scott.” And he mentioned wanting to speak with “one of your three editors. Steve, Charles or Patrick. …” We three edit the VeloNews.com website, not the magazine. Says so right there in the masthead on page 14.

Finally, he mistakenly elevates the “predominantly white collar and educated clientele” of a bicycling magazine over the blue-collar, Guns and Ammo rednecks of the world. I’ve lived among both ’necks and yuppies and find both crowds astoundingly human, which is to say imperfect, possessed of traits I admire and others I dislike.

But the rednecks have stopped more often to offer me a lift or some tools when they saw me fixing a flat tire during a ride. They’ve cheerfully given me venison, elk, even bear, from their hunts. And somehow I can’t recall one ever proposing to come after my family in the name of “sport,” or even something I’d published.

“Have some class and a conscience for god’s sake,” concludes our reader. And they said irony was dead.

This is the kind of story every newsdog lives for. It has it all: tyke gone missing in spectacular fashion; oddball family; a cast of thousands, first-responder-wise; a handy TV copter; and a happy ending. Well, for everyone save the kid, who probably has an ass-whuppin’ coming. You just can’t make this shit up.

Of course, Flush Limburger and his cronies will find some way to blame Obama for this. But for a couple hours there, while the nation thought a 6-year-old kid was zipping along at 8,000 feet in a homemade “flying saucer,” nobody was paying any attention to them.

Some commenters are already wondering whether the flight of “Millennium” Falcon Heene was a publicity stunt. If so, it worked like a charm. All of us will soon know a good more than we care to about this lot.

Meanwhile, some really good news: While Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden was busy dealing with The Case of the Missing Child, he was not harassing law-abiding cyclists in his jurisdiction. So we’ve got that going for us.

Another extended stint in the VeloBarrel has come to an end. Tomorrow, the off-season begins — it’s back to the usual two days a week playing editor at large for VeloNews.com, with two weeks before I have to crank out some nonsense for Bicycle Retailer & Industry News. Livin’ large, folks, livin’ large. Why, I may even ride a bicycle.

We had a “Wild Kingdom” moment here last night. Miss Mia Sopaipilla was watching one of the kitchen windows like it was must-see TV, so I took a peek myself. I had my reading glasses on, instead of my seeing glasses, but detected a couple lumpy shapes waddling through the back yard to a gap in the fence. Porcupines? Skunks? Really small Repuglicans?

Nope. Raccoons. I put my seeing glasses on and stepped out into the alley just in time to catch one of the masked devils scrabbling up a neighbor’s latticework, behind a climbing vine. No camera handy, alas, so you’ll have to make do with this midafternoon ‘coon-free shot of our own vine.