were sent to Southeast Asia for field-testing, according to a consensus of sources. Although there is no official record that any of these pistols were used for anything beyond controlled, noncombat testing, one U.S. military officer disagrees, saying he had accompanied a patrol of both U.S. and Vietnamese Special Forces in which the Deer Guns were carried for 'active evaluation," as he put it. The rest of his story is a tad grisly, but 1 have no reason to doubt the man's word. I've known him and his honesty since 1960. Here's what he told me: 'We had run a successful ambush and were returning for extraction with four prisoners, three of whom were wounded. The unwounded man was hostile and resisted restraint. Because of the surroundings and because the potential for hostile reaction to us being there was very real, our senior man decided to terminate the recalcitrant prisoner. "That's when I saw the Deer Gun 'field-tested.' It was used to terminate the prisoner. One shot was fired from a range of 3 feet into the back of the base of the man's head.