- Leslie: When you're out with the boys, you've gotta be ready for a good pantsing. That's why I have suspenders that connect my bra to my jeans.
It is time for Ron, Jerry, and Mark to do their "annual trail survey". Leslie is disgusted because they're actually going hunting, staying at the park rangers' cabin. Leslie complains to Ron and convinces him to let Tom and the women join despite his reservations.
While they are away, Leslie has April call the state parks office to verify the budget documentation for the Lot 48 project. What should be a simple job, however, has April waiting on hold at the phone for hours. When she desperately has to use the restroom, Andy agrees to wait by the phone. When she returns, the two pass the time by making up their own lyrics to the hold music, playing a non-water game of Marco Polo around the office, and seeing who can make the best spit-take.
After a safety briefing and a toast, the group sets out in pairs on their hunting adventure. Leslie goes with Ron, who has no problem with women joining them; he just doesn't like change and likes his quiet time. They make a wager over who can shoot the most birds. Leslie proves herself a capable hunter, while Ann has fun learning how to shoot targets with Mark. However, the trip takes a sudden turn when Ron gets shot in the back of the head and has to be brought back to the cabin. Although the injury isn't fatal, he's in a lot of pain and is utterly furious at whoever did this. Leslie calls a ranger over while Ann takes care of Ron. Donna then freaks out when she sees the window of her Mercedes was shattered.
As the group tries to figure out who shot Ron, Tom suggests that someone outside their group shot him, making everyone paranoid. When a noise is heard outside, Tom tries to shoot whoever it is, but it turns out to be a service worker who's come to fix Donna's Mercedes.
Ann takes Leslie aside and says she knows who shot Ron, and a few minutes later Leslie admits to the group that she was the shooter, even though Ann knows this is not the case. The park ranger arrives and interrogates Leslie, who goes along with the ranger's sexist implications in order to appease him.
Throughout the day, Andy and April bond as they have fun in the empty Parks Department office. When Andy says he's jealous of how Ann and Mark are on the hunting trip together, April offers to help Andy make Ann jealous by giving him a hickey. He's apprehensive at first but then agrees.
After the ranger leaves, Ron berates Leslie for shooting him. Ann finally gets fed up and reveals that Tom was the one who shot Ron and Leslie took the blame because Tom doesn't have a hunting license. Ron tells Leslie she's "a stand-up guy" and "did good" by covering for Tom and apologizes for yelling at her. He then turns his anger on Tom, calling him out for not having a license, and does this all night.
The next day, Ann is not impressed by Andy's attempts to make her jealous with the hickey April gave him while the Parks Department holds a welcome-back party for Ron after he spent some time recuperating in the hospital.
Tropes
- Accuser of the Brethren: Ron continually berates Leslie when he thinks she's the one who shot him. After learning the truth, he immediately apologizes to her and then turns it over to Tom, angrily chewing him out for the rest of the night.
- Artistic License – Gun Safety: Nobody follows even the most basic safety precautions, including firing wildly with no consideration of what's behind the target. Everyone, even Ron, has their finger clamped around the trigger at all times.
- The only gun safety rule that gets mentioned is, "don't point your gun at a person; that includes yourself", and that one rule is soon broken.
- Aside Glance: April gives a lot of these in this episode because she's self-conscious about flirting with Andy on camera.
- Beneath the Mask: Jerry briefly explains in one of the interview sections that thanks to living in a house with only women, the hunting trip is (or rather was) the only time he gets to relax and act masculine.
- Comically Missing the Point:
- Andy doesn't understand that in order to induce a spit take, he has to say something actually surprising.
- When Ron gets shot:Tom: Maybe Ron shot himself.
Leslie: Hmm... he has seemed really depressed lately.
Mark: He was shot in the back of the head!
Leslie: You're right, he loves the back of his head. He would never shoot himself there.
- Dumb Blonde: When the park ranger refuses to believe Leslie's perfectly plausible explanation for how she shot Ron, she comes up with a hurricane of excuses to make herself look like this, correctly figuring that if the ranger thinks she was genuinely negligent then there'll be trouble, but if she comes across like a clumsy idiot then he'll let her off the hook.
- Fall Guy: Tom was the one who shot Ron, and Leslie covers up for him to spare him Ron's wrath.
- Hiroshima as a Unit of Measure: After Ron gets shot in the head, Tom asks the others how angry Ron is on a scale of 1 to Chris Brown.
- Made of Iron: Ron was shot in the back of the head (albeit from a distance), and all it really does is lead to some bleeding and him in enraged pain.
- Justified as it was likely birdshot, as can be seen from the multiple small wounds in the back of Ron's head; birdshot is less likely to be lethal to humans at range. If Ron had been shot in the head with a rifle or buckshot, he would likely have not appeared in subsequent episodes.
- One of the Guys: Leslie wants to prove herself to be this. It works, but only because Tom admits that she covered for him after the shooting accident. Ron is immediately impressed and actually calls Leslie "a real stand-up guy".
- Only a Flesh Wound: Ron's gunshot wound.
- Operation: Jealousy: April persuades Andy to let her give him a bunch of hickies to make Ann jealous. "What's weird about one friend sucking on another friend's neck?" A Deleted Scene shows her giving Andy the hickies.
- Pants-Pulling Prank: Tom gets pantsed by both Ann and Leslie. Leslie goes out of her way to avert this for herself by wearing overalls.
- The Paranoiac: Tom leads the group into becoming this when he mentions that the shooting might have been because of someone outside their group.
- Pet the Dog: Uncharacteristically, everyone actually treats Jerry decently. In fact, it's even shown that he has something of a friendship with Mark and Ron since the three are surprisingly very amicable during the hunting trip itself. Maybe some of the cast respects Jerry after all.
- Potty Emergency: April deals with one when she's left on hold for an extremely long time by the State Parks Department.
- The Precious, Precious Car: Donna utterly freaks out screaming and crying over one of the windows of her Mercedes van getting shot and shattered. In a Deleted Scene, Leslie asks Donna if she was the one who shot Ron and Donna immediately shoots it down by stating she wouldn't do anything to mess up her car.
- A Real Man Is a Killer: Leslie tries to prove she's one of the guys by joining Ron's annual bird-hunting trip. She claims to be a good hunter and does down a few birds.
- Ridiculously Long Phone Hold: April is left on one with the State Parks Department that lasts for a good couple of hours, to the point that she needs Andy to wait by the phone for her so she can take a bathroom break.
- Screaming Woman: Donna, going into Overly Long Scream after a while. She gets this way over her precious Mercedes' window getting smashed.
- Ship Tease: After a brief moment in "Rock Show" planted a little seed, April and Andy's relationship gets to grow a little more in this episode.
- Shout-Out: Donna fears that the Predator is hunting them.
- Spit Take: April and Andy tell each other jokes to make the other do this.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: The basis of Andy and April's budding Odd Friendship.
- Straw Feminist: Leslie abuses this for comedic value: she says that Ron won't take her on the hunting trip because she's a woman. She also makes chauvinist comments about herself, hoping that pointing out that she is a woman will keep a sexist park ranger off her back.
- Straw Misogynist: The Ranger who responds to the emergency is like this. Leslie exploits it to manipulate him.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Ron likes everything to stay the same, so he believes things suck when Leslie invites herself and her group to the trip and hates every little thing that changes.
- 'Tis Only a Bullet in the Brain: At most, Ron only really gets a painful and bloody concussion. Given that they were only hunting birds, the bullets may well have been birdshots.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- Donna, when she looks into the barrel of her rifle.
- Tom, who went hunting without a hunting license, something that Ron is (understandably) pissed about.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: So, did the State Parks Department finally answer April's call, or did she spend a day waiting for nothing? In a deleted scene, someone finally picks up, April reads out the number and confirms they did get the delivery, then asks them to put her on hold again.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Ann, and later on Ron, angrily call Tom out for letting Leslie take the blame for his horrible slip-up.