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Internet Hunting
cybergrunt69 writes "An enterprising Texan, John Underwood currently has a website that lets you target-practice online with a .22 caliber rifle, but will soon start offering "hunting" abilities. He recently built a platform for about $10,000USD to house this new system on his 300 acre properly, but the Parks and Wildlife department is now scrambling to find ways to try and stop him. While this may sound like cheating to some people, this may be a large benefit to hunters with disabilities."
While the concept (firing a weapon from your home computer) is interesting, I think it removes some of the challenge and "sportsmanship" of hunting. Hunting is already lopsided in favor of humans anyway (Scents designed to draw the animal closer, clothing to mask or remove human odors, calls, etc) the idea of making it almost effortless is disturbing. If you want to kill an animal do it with your own hands on a weapon, not on a mouse button.
Oh and as far as disabled hunters go Here is a rather general article about disabled hunters and the "sport" they love.
I hope you die painfully and alone.
In the days of true hunting, hunters with disabilities became the prey.
So if you kill someone while on-line are you guilty? And how are they going to get you if you're in some far off country. This is a dangerous idea that could (most likely will) get way out of hand.
An attendant will pick up the shot animals!!!
WTF?
Who wants that job?
At the golf driving range we all target the ball-retriever machines/attendants when they go to get the balls... and , hey this is Texas we are talking about!
Shoot the rabbit and WIN AN IPOD!!!
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
What we NEED is a robot on a Segway (for terrain adaptation and minimal field footprint) that's noise-dampened, carrying a shotgun, with a sensor that won't allow it to shoot outside a given radius.
::Shht:: Counterhunters Win.
Why all this, you ask? So we can CIRCLE STRAFE those freaking animals over the internet~!
(Deer proceeds to knock over robot mid-hunt, rendering it useless)
Walkie Talkie Voice :
I don't think the "he was a camper" defense would stand up in court.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Yahoo has the story, too. They include a link to the website: live-shot.com.
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suwain_2
Live Shot
Here's a link to the site. This is probably a bad idea, but I want gun toting robots for myself, so who am I to judge.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Yeah, because an armed populace would prevent a major world power from invading your land today.
Like Iraq for example.
You can't win a fight.
An advanced society makes accomodations for its disabled members, which is why prostitution should be legalized immediately.
paintball
the website www.live-shot.com
From the "how it works" page:
LIVE-SHOT is similar to a trip to the rifle range with one very notable exception. Everything is done through a computer and the internet. A paid membership will allow for access to the range viewing camera(s) at any time.
interesting...
looks like when hunting goes live you can hunt
Aoudad (Barbary Sheep), Blackbuck Antelope, A wide variety of sheep, Wild Hog, and Other antlered species like axis, fallow, and red stag will be available on a limited basis.
DOH! We shouldn't have patched the reactor with duct tape!!
It's going to be possible for off site hunting accidents and off site manslaughter.
How about making it illegal to operate a weapon remotely for anything but military purposes? The further you remove a person from the carnage the more it seems like a game, and the less thought and respect for life you're likely to see.
There are real consequences to this hunting. Animals die. You wouldn't pilot an aircraft with real people in it by remote control via a flight sim or camera setup.
Sorry if my thoughts are a little scattered.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
- It has no sane rules to elect the president. Something like the electorial college made sense 200 years ago, but not now!
- It permitted slavery. Later on, it get "re-interpreted". Duh, what does that tell you!?
- With no proper institutions to safe you from the evil empire (the UK) or evil neighbors, handguns made sense. Things have changed...
- ...
So, looking at the constitution as a source of truth and wisdom is, frankly, bullshit.Apart from that: What sportsmanship (or honor) is there if a disabled person shoots animals like this? It's pathetic, and people engaging in this sort of activity for fun are just disgusting bastards.
A more concise summary of the essence of redneckhood may never have been spoken. Truly a quote for the ages.
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
Just wait until someone writes an aimbot.
paintball
I thought the entire excuse for hunting was for tradition and the sportsmanship.
No.
That's what city people who never actually hunted think.
Hunting is NOT a game.
Hunting is about skill, and patience, and responsibility, and consequences.
Hunting is about handling deadly tools safely.
Hunting is about working alone, or in a group, to achieve a difficult goal.
Hunting is about coming to a personal understanding that you, and your family, are also animals, that every day you live because something else - plant or animal - died to feed you.
Hunting is about the lengths you will go to keep your family fed and healthy.
Hunting is about knowing, deep in your gut, that the animal you hunt will hurt and die. And hunting (for humans) is about honoring that animal, by making its death for your benefit as fast and painless as possible, an easier death than it would suffer from the teeth and claws of some other peredator, from disease, from accident, or from starvation.
Hunting is about understanding your place in nature:
You are a predator.
You are at the top of the food chain
You are SO effective at what you do that you MUST be careful, lest you wipe out those things you depend on for your own life.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I have no problem with hunting, nor killing animals (mmmm... lamb!) but this guy's idea is just plain idiotic.
It's not a good idea because it poses a significant, and unusual, risk to human life and on top of that, it is going to remove the level of immediacy that is required to allocate legal responsibility for an action (i.e. shooting a gun) with a person (Joe Sixpack).
What if someone is out in the range adjusting some equipment, and the thing that was supposed to disconnect the Internet death trigger malfunctioned... I mean, is he planning on using an OS that is authorized for mission critical / life supporting systems? That won't be Windows or Linux, as you probably know.
The idea is just flawed. We as Engineers go to a lot of trouble to make systems that are safe for humans. This system poses unnecessary and probably significant risk to humans.
Then why does every good hunting story start with "after the first six pack?"
I thought the entire excuse for hunting was for tradition and the sportsmanship.
Different people have different reasons, but some of the common ones are:
The main reason I enjoy hunting is that it motivates me to get closer to nature than I ever do otherwise. That's a really odd fact, one I don't understand. I'm not necessarily anxious to kill anything, though I like the meat, and the thrill of the stalk is fantastic (I most often hunt with a bow). What I enjoy most is being out there. So why don't I go out there just to go, rather than to hunt?
I do, actually. I like to hike and camp, and I spend lots of time in the mountains just because I enjoy being there. I take hikes involving one or two thousand feet of elevation gain and three or four miles horizontal distance. I take lots of pictures and occasionally "stalk" with my camera.
But when I'm hunting it's not unusual to climb three thousand feet or more and hike 5-10 miles in the morning and then do the same again in the evening. And although I always pay attention to my surroundings (that being the point of going there), I pay much *more* attention when hunting, and I therefore get a lot more out of it. For example, when hunting I can often smell the animals and even identify them by their scent. When I'm just hiking I don't seem to notice their scents at all. Hunting motivates me to do things like dressing from head to toe in camouflage and then sitting completely motionless for hours, until the animals have completely forgotten I'm not just an oddly-shaped bush. A fawn bounced into me and knocked me off the log I was sitting on, once.
I enjoy hunting because I like the cool experiences I have as a result of doing somewhat extreme things to get very close to nature. I could do *exactly* the same things without spending $60 on a hunting license, plus more than I want to think about on all of the gear, but I don't, and when I try it's not the same.
Anyway, the point of this wildly off-topic rumination is to say:
Shooting animals via remote control over the Internet isn't "hunting" for people who for whatever reason can't do it in person. It's just a weird, hi-tech way of slaughtering animals. Killing is actually the smallest and least important part of sport hunting.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
but the majority of hunters I encounter seem to be pissed idiots, blasting away at roadsigns and leaving beer cans and rubbish everywhere.
How do you know?
I mean, do you ask everybody you meet if they're a hunter?
I have friends who do and don't hunt. There's not a test that I can apply, other than asking "do you hunt?" I expect it's the same with you, unless you have a "hunter seeker" that tells you when you're talking to a hunter. So you have the following sample of the hunting population: (1) people whom you've asked if they hunt, (2) people whom you find out hunt through other means (such as, they mention it in conversation), and (3) pissed idiots that you assume are hunting, or observe hunting.
I'm going to make a guess here, and assume that you probably don't have a lot of conversations about hunting. So most of your sample is probably from #3. That's a skewed sample.
I have never knowingly had a conversation with the "pissed idiot" variety of hunter, and I've talked with many hunters. I have seen people getting pissed and blasting away at roadsigns, but I haven't ever known them to be hunting. Just being dangerous idiots.
I've seen multiple comments mirroring your sentiment in this thread, and I'm surprised. If you walked through a school and saw 98% that were dressed normally, and 2% that were dressed in too-tight white shirts with pocket protectors, would you assume that all computer types are thusly dressed? Or would you consider that perhaps computer types come in different shapes and sizes, and that perhaps there are computer geeks in that 98%? Stereotypes are always dangerous when you try to evaluate a social class.
You know what - all the pleasures you have described can be felt by going for a bicycle ride through the countryside, snowboarding or if you really feel like spend thousands of bucks on equipment AND want to stalk something, by playing paintball.
Admit it, you like to kill.
"I eat steak and chicken and enjoy both, but let's not pretend hunting's anything noble or magnificent"
It may or may not be noble on absolute terms, but I personally I think hunting a wild animal gives it far more dignity relative to livestock raised solely for slaughter. Personally, I'd say the ones who take "pleasure in killing something else" aren't out hunting, they're at the slaughterhouse cracking open the skulls of cattle with a hammer. I mean, with hunting you maybe kill one large mammal a day if you're good and if you're lucky, but you get to see bits of cow brains fly all day, every day at the meat plant. Of course, even that gets boring after a while, but there's always opportunities to get... shall we say "creative?"
"If you can't get to a supermarket, okay, I can understand why you'd need to hunt."
Yes, because you can get venison so cheap at the supermarket...
"As it stands now, though, I have nothing but contempt for the overweight rednecks who need a rifle and a corpse to feel like men."
They're not the ones ignoring where the food on their plate came from. What they think about it and how it effects them is debatable, but it certainly isn't blithe ignorance.
Hunting is about skill, and patience, and responsibility, and consequences.
Hunting is about handling deadly tools safely.
Would someone please explain that to all the hunters we caught rifle hunting within a couple hundred yards of my house when I was a kid, despite fine mist of NO HUNTING signs that we sprayed across our property?
Or the guy who set up the salt lick on our property?
I'd especially like to have that explained to the guy who came out of the forest (and into our backyard) screaming some gibberish about how dangerous it is to be outside (in my backyard, playing on a swingset) during deer season, all because he had seen some movement and had the gun lined up and ready to fire, his finger only checked because he heard me say something?
There are a lot of guys who romanticize hunting. Which is great, there is truth to the "hunting shows you your place in nature" story. But in my experience, you guys are totally outnumbered. For most folks, hunting seems to simply be about finding things and shooting them. Any food you might get is just a bonus.
That's the only way I can understand why we had so many encounters with hunters firing rifles more or less in our backyard when I was a kid, or when we had so many problems with hunters hunting on my school's wildlife preserve when I was in college, or why I am seeing this story about a remote-control rifle that you can control from the Internet right now.
I don't get the lure of hunting at all.
I'll try to respond to this, honestly and respectfully. Bear in mind, I'm only one hunter, so my motivations will not match those of all other hunters.
My father imparted me with two fundamental hunting ethics:
1. Give your prey a the opportunity to use his strengths against you
This means that, when hunting birds, you don't shoot them on the ground, or in the water. If you encounter a stationary game bird, you first flush the bird, and allow it to put some distince between it and you, before you shoot. For big game (deer, for example), choose your weaponry or environment so as to require a very close (20-30 yards) encounter. Deer have unbelievably sharp senses of sight, smell, and hearing. Getting one to approach you to within 20 yards is no easy task. Some big-game hunters proudly display the elk trophy they took with a 350-yard shot -- I wouldn't call that hunting; it's more like a display of marksmanship. If you want to impress me with your skills as a hunter, show me the elk you took with a bow at 25 yards.
2. Only kill what you intend to eat.
You can't "catch and release" when you're hunting. If you don't intend on eating it, you've got no reason to kill it.
People who grow vegetables will tell you that tomatoes, corn, beans, peas -- all taste better when they come from your own garden. In addition, you know that they're organic (if you've chosen to raise them that way.) In the same way, pheasant, duck, and venison taste better to me when I know I've harvested it myself. In addition, I know that this meat is "free range" and organic, as well as lower in fat than anything I can buy at market.
In your comments, you raise some frequently-heard arguments:
The animals stand no chance. Neither does the pig, cow, or chicken going to slaughter. Using ethic #1, above, the prey is allowed to use his innate talents against my technology. The majority of the time (in my own hunting experience) the animal wins.
The hardest part is finding something - after that, if you have reasonable aim, you will surely kill it. This is partially true. It is difficult, and rewarding, to find game animals. I've spent many long, quiet hours remaining motionless in the woods waiting to hear or see a deer. Some of those unsuccessful hunts are memorable to me because of everything else I've seen -- an ermine catching a mouse, a wren landing on my boot, a skunk leading her kits across a field.
Reasonable aim isn't a guaranteed kill, however. There are species of ducks (scaup) I hunt that fly at nearly 50 miles per hour. This season, I saw perhaps 300 of these ducks, was able to lure enough into range to take a dozen shots, and killed only two.
I think all hunters should have to fight the animals with hand-to-hand combat. Give the animal a chance to do some damage in return.
I've often thought about this. I've been close enough to deer on several occasions that I could have jumped out of my tree with a knife in hand to do battle. I'm not sure it's legal in my state to kill a deer with a knife. I'm also not positive that I could have a "cleaner" kill with a kife than with an arrow or bullet to the heart.
I understand that hunting is not for everyone. I don't deride those who don't enjoy hunting. There's a thrill in hunting, and it's not about killing, death and destruction - it's about personal accomplishment, of self-sufficiency. Sure, I could go to the grocery store and buy a duck -- hunting may cost more, but in the end I get the duck, the memory of the sunrise that morning, and a sense of achievement as well.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
Hunting, as a sport, emphasizes aspects which put food on the table for our ancestors. It's not simply about putting a jacketed slug into an animal, its about excercising patience, the stalk, the outdoors, about becoming one with your environment. What passes for hunting nowadays is already a travesty, what with laser range finders and designaters, infrared high power scopes, pheremone enhanced scents, and prerecorded broadcast noises designed to attract rutting deer. We (the hunting community) have lost respect for the animal as a clever prey worthy of our effort, and have turned it into a glorified bloodsport with a billion dollar a year industry convincing us they need their product to get that edge.
So don't get upset over this moron and his robo-hunter. Its just one more turn.
(Real hunters use iron sites. Hardcore hunters use a bow and arrow. Real men hunt with giant fucking knifes and sharpened sticks.)