Online hunting

Simply sit, point, click and bam! Bambi gets it. Why hunting over the internet is the height of convenience

John Sutherland
Monday May 9, 2005
The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1479359,00.html

Americans simply can't understand British anti-hunting laws. We too will wonder about the latest anti-hunting legislation rushed through in California last week. It should soon be followed in other states - states traditionally friendly to the licensed blasting of anything furred, feathered or four-legged.

Live-shot, a Texas firm, has pioneered what it calls "a new concept" - computer-assisted hunting (CAH). You, the hunter, sit at your computer. A pan/tilt/zoom camera has been set up on a hide in the wilds - perhaps thousands of miles away if you are not resident in Texas. It's real time, real wilds, real firearms, real bloodsport. This is not a video game.

The lens picks up a visual spoor - what is it? Yes. It's a deer, tripping obliviously through the grass. Line up the crosshairs on the screen. The finger clicks on the mouse. Bam! A .22 calibre round is discharged - exactly where Nimrod, the Great (Computer) Hunter, has aimed it. The prey falls. Hasta la vista, Bambi.

A couple of days later the kill is Fedexed to your door. Another set of antlers to fix on the wall over the trusty iMac. Venison burgers tonight. Hemingway never had it so easy. Cost for the digital safari is $150 (£80 ) an hour plus "harvest fee" and p&p. For $10 plus shipping you can have a DVD of your exploit. Taxidermy and the curing of pelts can be arranged.

Indignation against CAH has forged an unlikely alliance between the American Humane Society and the National Rifle Association. Both are appalled by what www.liveshot.com offers. For the animal rights people, CAH is cyberslaughter - "off the ethical charts".

For its part the NRA repudiates CAH because it lacks "fair chase". Shooting bears with assault rifles from helicopters is, of course, fair chase. But not potting barbary sheep, three states away, in between putting your weekly order into Amazon and checking the email.

There has been some defence of CAH from bodies representing the disabled. Live-shot founder, John Lockwood, astutely recruited an Indiana paraplegic to be the world's first internet hunter. Why can't the physically handicapped enjoy the fun of the chase and the thrill of the kill?

Horribly ingenious as it is, CAH represents only a minor extension of current technology. Live-shot is CCTV, loaded for bear. Is CAH that different from losing your week's pay-packet at online poker? Is it different from reckless romance in a chatroom?

What's more, is CAH all that different from traditional hunting? When Prince Philip goes out at Sandringham to bag a few dozen brace, he isn't "hunting" pheasants. The luckless birds have been reared at huge expense, then driven by beaters to fly precisely over HRH's head. A loader hands him the gun to bring down the quarry which is then retrieved from the undergrowth by trained hounds.

Prince Philip's august predecessor, Prince Albert, preferred the "battu" in which deer were rounded up from their natural habitat into a pen where the "huntsmen" would blast away at the beasts until none were left standing. What's the difference other than that CAH is bloodsport for the common man?

In a larger sense, CAH represents a logical extension of the convenience culture which is spreading faster than we can guess at its ramifications. In the convenience culture, everything is pay-per view, downloaded, or purchased, via plastic, at the webstore. You can live a full life nowadays without ever hoisting your rump from the armchair.

In the long run, CAH will appeal not to traditional hunters or would-be hunters in wheelchairs. It is the young, who have honed their childhood skills on Grand Theft Auto, who will want to graduate from the virtual to the real.

There is, of course, another prospective clientele. The California bill bans anyone resident in that state from operating a CAH site and bars the importation of animals killed by remote hunting. Violations can incur six months inside and a $1,000 (£530) fine. But, as things now stand, it's only Californians who are subject to the ban. The internet portal remains open for British huntsmen and women, still chafing at being denied their traditional field sport.

We may not be allowed to hunt with live dogs any more. But, as things stand, thanks to Live-shot, the British can (unlike Californians) hunt with the mouse.