WP,pg1: Mouse Click Brings Home Thrill of the Hunt (killing online)

Mouse Click Brings Home Thrill of the Hunt
Critics Move to Stop Tex. Online Business

By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 8, 2005; Page A01


BULVERDE, Tex. -- On a tranquil Central Texas landscape, three fallow deer wandered through live oak and cedar as a rifle barrel poked out of a small shack nearby. With a metallic click, the Remington, clutched in a motorized steel cradle without a hunter at the trigger, swiveled to track them.

The gun's scope showed the cross hairs settle right behind a buck's shoulder and hold steady, a perfect aim that would kill the animal in one clean shot -- if the hunter wanted to fire the gun. More than 1,300 miles away in Indiana, looking at his computer screen, he decided to pass. This hunter wants to bag a blackbuck antelope, and he will wait to click the computer mouse that will send the electronic signal to shoot.

It is called hunting by remote control, the brainchild of Texas entrepreneur John Lockwood, whose Internet business advertises a "real time on-line hunting and shooting experience."

The business, Live-Shot, is open to everyone who registers and pays monthly $14.95 membership dues and a $1,000 deposit toward the cost of the animal. People using the service must have a valid Texas hunting license, which can be obtained online.

The Remington .30-06 rifle is mounted atop a homemade contraption of welded metal and a piece of butcher block, and is attached to a small motor, three video cameras (two linked to the Internet, including the one embedded in the gun scope) and a door lock actuator, like that used in a car. The actuator is attached to a wire that pulls the trigger at the click of the mouse. From virtually anywhere, someone with an Internet connection can fire the rifle....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/07/AR2005050701270.html

Even "ethical hunters" abhor the very thought of this.

Personally, any sit-and-wait method of hunting herbivores isn't hunting. Just killing.

The asshats that are so desperate for a "hunt" that they're happy to shoot at something from a cubicle or living room, should just go enlist. Oh, wait...they shoot back. Nevermind.

....and there were a few DUers who actually supported this "sport." Pretty depressing.

By the way, flvegan, practically all deer hunting in Texas is of the "sit-and-wait" variety. You sit in a covered blind with a high-powered rifle, and at a convenient distance away, large electric feeders spew out corn all over the ground. It makes a great racket, to which the deer respond by wandering in like a bunch of holstein cattle. Not much "sport" there, which is one reason I don't hunt anymore (the other reason being that, in my rather extensive experience, 95% of Texas deer hunters are right-wing assholes). Fly fishing is a lot more challenging, and a lot more liberals are involved in it....and you can let the fish go when the fight is over...

:puke: :grr:

is a camera.

During "hunting" season in New England in the '70s I would go trail riding, actually at racing speeds, through the woods to make some noise and scare the deer away from known hunting stands. It sounds like the trail bikers in Texas need ot get busy.

It was a good feeling while I was loading my bike on the trailer at the end of the day watching the hunters return to their vehicles with no kill. Of course the woods were always littered with dead squirrels, chipmunks, possum, crows, etc. that were killed by the hunters for yuks.

I know I could have been shot at, but I depended on my speed flying between the tree stands to thwart that idea and it was a good feeling to save some critters.

I thought this internet killing was banned by the Fish & Wildlife department. I must be thinking of another state.

rather than being bagged by a hunter to provide food for his family.

I assume from your post that you must be a vegetarian...either that or a hypocrite.

and know when the browse is diminished or not. The deer weren't starving, they are not generally eaten, but are taken to a taxidermist for the so-called trophy mount. The hunters have their Gucci-like camo garb and designer rifles and are into sitting in a stand for a kill....no hunting involved. So I'm neither a vegetarian nor a hypocrite....I just happen to know what's going on with fish and wildlife resources because it's my business. You obviously don't.

That's the usual excuse given for justifying hunting, that the deer would die of starvation.

I am a copy editor for hunting and fishing magazines. I have to read countless hunting stories from 10 states. I know that the Fish and Wildlife and DNRs around the country manage the deer for hunters. And hunting is not for sustenance anymore, but for a trophy to hang on the wall. It's terrible that these beautiful bucks are doomed because they have big 10-point or bigger racks. And a majority of them never get beyond 1-1/2 years of age before they are killed unless they are lucky enough to live in areas where the hunters can't go.

it may seem terrible to you that 10-point bucks are doomed- but i doubt that you'd want them freely roaming through your neighborhood, either.

and the ones i know always process the meat of the deer they harvest...very few of them have any trophy mounts. I have no problem with what they are doing. when humans come in to an area, they get rid of the predators, and there are no controls on the animals that are too large for domestic cats to kill...therefore the humans have to do the work of the predators that they have displaced.

Anybody who eats beef or pork in this country has no right to criticize the harvesting of deer for consumption by those who enjoy doing so.

Really?

Where?

in the winter.

If the "hunter" pays for the animal, and the meat is packaged and put to use, it's more like a private slaughterhouse on a very small scale-
in that sense, it's no more disgusting, and probably a lot less traumatic on the animals, than the modern-day beef or pork industries.

This guy might be on to something- there are a lot of twisted folk in this country, with a lot of pent up agression...

...but you sure have the boilerplate hunting-advocacy lingo down: "It's not hunting--it's harvesting." Yeah, right.

Actually, this computer-assisted abomination you've chosen to defend is neither hunting nor harvesting: it's aiming and touching a button.

And bonus points for your final remark, which seems to imply that the killing of animals is therapeutic for "twisted folk...with a lot of pent up aggression." I bet you're lots of fun at parties.....

"I bet you're lots of fun at parties....."

if you don't think that deer-hunting is harvesting, then i suppose you consider the guy that runs the brain-bashing machine at the friendly neighborhood slaughterhouse is a hunter too?

when there are too many deer in an area because development has forced out predators- what do you suggest be done?

which will not occur because it will piss off the soccer moms and commuting daddies, or bring in trained wildlife agency biologists and shoot the deer with the chemicals that cause sterility.

If that isn't enough, then only sharpshooter wildlife biologists should cull the herd so that they can pick and choose the right male to female ratio, based on health aspects, and deadeye shooting that drops the animal without causing suffering.

I've lost count at the number of times these yahoo weekend hunters miss the mark and deer/moose/elk run around suffering for a week or more mortally wounded. My favs are the Wall Street aholes that shoot large dogs and dairy cows in Vermont thinking they got a deer. In Minnesota I've watched as they drive up farm roads, stop and shoot a moose with their rifle barrel steading on the bedrail of their pickup trucks. Moose are like cows...they just stand there.

Take the hunting away from these so-called hunters and leave it to the wildlife professionals. Many times these dummy hunters shoot each other which only culls their own herd.

Way to go MSM!

Stewart waaaaaay ahead of the news cycle.

Again. :eyes:

On hunting, though: Interesting statistic here in CO, 80% of all vehicle accidents involve deer or elk. This was astounding to me.

You see situations -- like this mesa I'm house-sitting on this week -- where an ecosystem is messed up by 5-10-20 acre developments. Even this relatively low density scares off the big cats, then the deer population goes through the roof.

I kid you not, I pass no less than 50 every morning in different places along a 10-mile drive, always right near the road. I don't know about starving, they seem well enough fed to me. But a lack of predators like this can't be natural, and as many as we hit around here -- I hear at least 3 deer vs. car incidents every night on the scanner -- doesn't appear to affect the population.

:shrug:

there's just not enough foliage to go around.

DARPA has developed stuff like this.

"More than 1,300 miles away in Indiana, looking at his computer screen, . . . he will wait to click the computer mouse that will send the electronic signal to shoot."



:evilfrown: :freak: :nuke: :grr: :hide: :thumbsdown: