The whole neighborhood takes their kids out for hunt for their first step into manhood, and Hank and Bobby aren't able to do so due to their not being able to get hunting permits.
Tropes:
- Animal Wrongs Group: Hank and Bobby can't hunt because a hunger strike by an animal rights' group limited the number of available permits. As Hank points out, this will lead to more suffering for the deer, since they will all starve without the herd being thinned by hunters.
- Calling Parents by Their Name: Bobby does this to Peggy as he's about to go into his hunting trip, but this was before Hank's failed attempt to get permits.
- Car Fu: While driving Hank's truck, Bobby accidentally hits a deer. While initially upset about it, Hank tells him it was a clean kill, which gives Bobby his wish to kill a deer after all.
- Comically Missing the Point: Before going hunting, John Redcorn gives Joseph (secretly his biological son) a knife that's a family heirloom; he stresses how it was given to him by his father which was given to him by his own father. Joseph doesn't really understand the significance of it or doesn't care, and just dismisses it as a used knife.
- Curse Cut Short: Hank does this when Eustace comes in and tells him about how he's going to take his son Randy hunting: "You're going to take that son.... of yours hunting?" It's established that Hank and the guys think Eustace and Randy are sissies.
- Dumpster Dive: The opening has Bill, Dale and Boomhauer seeing a deer eating their garbage, with Bill having to point out that it was a deer and not Bill himself. The Stinger has Bobby going into Hank's truck and pretending to drive, with him accidentally turning on the lights to reveal Bill eating the trash. Doubles as a Brick Joke.
- Everyone Has Standards: At the La Grunta hunting, with Bobby ready to shoot a deer after it is lured by the corn feeder. He ends up relenting, feeling that it's not sporting, something which Hank agrees with.
- Failed a Spot Check: Hank is prepared for hunting, except for one important detail: he didn't get the hunting permits. He tries to get some on the day of the hunt, but is unable to, due to the clerk office reaching their limit on permits.
- Heroic BSoD: Bobby has one when he sees Joseph, Connie and the other neighbors and their kids bring home their own bucks they killed, which brings Bobby into tears, with him lamenting now he knows how Jewish kids feel at Christmas. This prompts Hank to take him to La Grunta.
- Imagine Spot: Bobby has one before everyone else goes hunting with him and Hank, where he trips and tells him to go on without him, but Bobby insists they're a team and carries him on his shoulders while he kills a deer (it even nods in approval before dying) and Hank praises him as a perfect son and a man.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Bill recalls the childhood story of killing his first buck, which took six shoots to bring him down and three more to kill it. He mentions there was no usable meat left but still enjoyed the thrill nonetheless.
- Kiddie Kid: Bobby, being depressed over not being able to hunt, ends up playing cowboys with a kid much younger than him, even playing dead as Hank catches him and tries to take him back inside before the neighbors see him.
- Kids Driving Cars: To make up for the disappointing trip to La Guardia, Hank decides to take a step for Bobby to reach manhood and let him drive his truck. He does pretty well until hitting a deer.
- Like Father, Like Son: After Dale and Joseph's communication equipment (made from Soviet technology) screeches, Dale says it doesn't work like it's supposed to, but Joseph counters it's doing what it's supposed to do; it's something to read their minds and it bounced a signal off to a submarine in the gulf of Mexico. His point makes Dale proud, showing the Gribble apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
- Literal Metaphor: Eustace tells Hank about the hunting at La Grunta, which consists of being in the stand and luring the deer by corn feeders and then being about to shoot them, which causes Hank to say that's not hunting, that's shooting fish in a barrel. Eustace points out they have that too.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Kahn even takes Connie out hunting, a typically redneck activity, which is something you would think Kahn would look down on, though this is one more way he treats her more like the son he never had than a daughter.
- A Real Man Is a Killer: After not being able to hunt, Bobby draws a deer on a box and has a fruit pie as its heart and he hunts and kills it. This concerns Peggy, as he's getting to be the age where his hormones are making him crazy and makes her fear he could be a violent kid.
- Rite of Passage: How hunting is treated here, with killing their first deer growing up from boyhood to manhood.
- That Came Out Wrong: While trying to reassure Bobby after leaving La Grunta empty-handed:Hank: You know, there's plenty of worse things than getting to hold onto your boyhood for another year. And, uh, by "holding onto your boyhood", I didn't mean...
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: When Hank fails to get the permits in time (resulting in he and Bobby being unable to go hunting), Bobby starts shooting (with a Nerf gun) a target with a fruit pie in the center, smearing the filling on his face like bloody war paint. Peggy becomes extremely distressed.
- Peggy: He's at the age when little-boy hormones get violent. They don't call them "nice, quiet" hormones. They're "raging," Hank! He has a chemical need to kill. I was counting on you to channel that need away from humans.
