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Camera Gun Would Let Hunters Get Killer Wildlife Shots
Zothecula writes "Not too long ago, brothers Randy and Michael Gregg were out on a hunting expedition. It was the day after deer season had ended, yet they spied a handsome animal bedded down in the snow. Not wanting to pass up an opportunity, they silently crept up on their quarry, raised their rifle, lined the deer up in the crosshairs ... and then took a picture through the scope with a mobile phone. That photo provided all the proof they needed that they had successfully stalked their prey, without bringing home an illegally-obtained carcass. It also inspired them to create the Kill Shot — a replica hunting rifle, that takes pictures instead of firing bullets." The Kill Shot isn't just for hunters. Think of how great this would be at sporting events or family reunions!
It's too bad they didn't have these in 1963. It would have been nice to have a close-up of Kennedy's awesome hair.
Trolling is a art,
I think a replica rifle is liable to cause some consternation at your average sporting event.
Microsoft leads to Bluescreen; Bluescreen leads to downtime; downtime leads to suffering.
What could possibly go wrong?
People have been making DIY versions of cameras mounted on rifle stocks for decades. I had an 8th grade teacher that gave up bullets in favor of film.
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Are these allowed in stripper bars?
Police will be called out to those events because "there's someone with a gun!" Family reunion becomes a family bloodbath.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
My aunt and uncle are avid bird watchers in Canada. My uncle built up a spotting scope on a rifle stock that he uses up there all the time. He brought it down here to SoCal and was out at the edge of a lagoon looking at shore birds when all of a sudden a number of police cars showed up, lights flashing, and the officers jumped out and drew their service pistols. Seems a number of folks had reported a lunatic (I'm not dismissing that assessment) with a gun out in the lagoon. Luckily they didn't shoot my uncle, but instead had a bit of a chuckle about the whole thing with the ultimate suggestion that his selection of bird watching paraphernalia could be better ;-) Relatives!
Given the current political climate, this is a good idea gone incredibly wrong. If you come too close to law enforcement with something resembling a rifle, be prepared to be in a very sticky situation. These days even "toy" guns can get you in a ton of trouble. Cops' trigger fingers seem even itchier than ever.
I guess I'm old fashioned when I say that one should only kill another animal if it is wounded and will die (mercy killing), if it has been wounded and will not heal well enough to serve it's job (ie, a gimp horse), or for food. Now we have people running around with cameras on their guns proving how manly they are killing creatures for their own pleasure. How utterly wasteful...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
That's pretty neat, really.
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/sniper/index.htm
Hooray for the russians!!
The Photo Sniper was initially made for the Russian market. The text on the camera body, on the pistol grip and on the container was in Russian. ÐÐzÐÐz ÐÐÐÐ(TM)ÐYÐÐ means FOTO SNAIPER (Photo Sniper). The container was usually painted in the typical Russian grey hammerite colour.
I'll bet that the brothers did not consider this for anything other than for the game hunter, where it would not be out of place. Any other situation and I'd guess they'd say "uh, why not just use a regular camera?"
Much longer season. Problem solved!
In CA there is such a hunter shortage I can get 6 tags a year. (2 early season primitive, 2 rifle, 2 late season primitive.)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Imagine getting a photo of a politician with this camera: http://www.novacon.com.br/odditycameras/mamiyapc.htm Or going to a (US) National Park with one of these: http://fedka.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=610&osCsid=726706c7db885cd7ea53125689e0e62e
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
I always thought the target range was where you trained. I do not see how taking a picture of my target is more helpful than knowing how the gun feels when it actually goes off recoils etc ...
Too soon, man, too soon.
Does it come with an extra sock? Y'know, to stuff down the front of the owner's pants - would fill in about half the need for "sport hunting" right there.
For a bonus, it could come with a jar of chloroform and a bottle of Frothy Mix brand lube, to cover most of the OTHER half of the need...
Needs to be painted bright, NERF yellow and orange to have at least a chance of not getting shot at by a trigger happy cop. Why does it even need a barrel if it's not shooting a bullet? I can understand the stock, trigger and scope part.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
Regardless of your good intentions, this may eventually get you charged with poaching.
I love insects and spiders, and have always been fascinated by them. When I was young, I had a colossal bug collection which I meticulously caught, killed, dried and pinned in display cases. I now have case upon case of dry-rotting insects that were once beautiful and that I even felt a bit guilty about killing (I love spiders too much to kill them, even just one for a collection). At the time, I didn't realize how rare some of them were and in fact there are some silver-spot butterflies in there that I have never seen other than the one specimen I caught.
In retrospect, I wish my parents had given me a camera and told me to go photograph them so that I wouldn't have to kill the specimen and could keep the picture forever. In cases where population control isn't the issue and they don't particularly like the meat, I could see hobby hunters getting into photography instead!
Wildlife photography is not a new thing, but this is a shitty tool for it.
and they don't taste as good either.
As a kid, I would go on hunting trips with my dad, almost every summer. During one of our trips, I was maybe 8, I asked him if they made such a camera, and he thought nothing of it, said no they didn't, and why bother since you can just get a real camera. He then quip that whenever he would carry just a camera he would see more wildlife then when carrying a rifle. It never dawned on me later in life (actually, I had forgotten the event until just reading this article) that it might actually have a market.
Now, take it to the next level. Have these camera gun's all get wifi and can do video (not just freeze frame pictures), and all connect to a central server. Then as "shots" occur, the server has them time stamped, and can do inspection on the images to see where the shot would have landed, and if it would have counted as a kill shot. Then just have the handle of the gun shake if it registers that you have been killed. Afterwards the server could take the feeds from the camera's and give a kill shot run through, perhaps using some video from some of the players who didn't have shaky hands or whatever heuristics you wanted to make... and ta da! You now have The Worlds Most Expensive Laser Tag game with extra video goodness!
I had this idea back in high school. Guess I should've patented it then.
But I also realized then that hunters want more than the experience leading up to killing; they really want the killing itself...
Defenceless animals.. I sincerely doubt this will ever catch on.
I can think of lots of great uses for this. Personally I plan to use mine to take pictures of the President next time he's in town.
What could go wrong?
Part of the fun of hunting is physics in action. You have a possibly moving prey X meters away. You need to know the wind, hold the gun steady, lead the prey, and know the drop of a bullet. If you just take a picture, that could be a complete miss from bullet drop. If you just take a picture, you could have missed with a bullet because the prey was moving.
Regulated hunting is good because it keeps the animals from overtaking the environment and being pests as most of the natural predators are gone.
God spoke to me
Replace the trigger with a shutter button and you miss the physical kick of the gun, etc.
http://countzero.com/html/albums/GunStockCamera/Gun_Stock_Camera.sized.jpg For an AR15 mount. I've seen the BushHawk advertised for years now. It is basically the same concept... but the stock makes it easier to hold the camera steady, and the triggering mechanism is down there, too: http://www.bushhawk.com/bushhawk/bushhawk-shoulder-mounts.
And speeches, don't forget those. I'm sure no alarms would go off using it there.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
...for hunting the most dangerous game >:)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That was stalking them?
Mod me all to hell but this just seems Un-American (disclaimer: I am not American)
Just think, you can get great pictures from the back of the audience at a presidential inauguration
How long before the police arrest some idiot taking pictures of people that way?
may 3o, may not Come on baby...and reformatted superior to s7ow, of Walnut Creek,
I've seen something like this before... Oh yeah, during the vietnam war....
http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20090129/hi-8-camera-gun/
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
Humans can't live without killing other living things. Until we learn to photosynthesize, that is. You just sound like someone who doesn't want to think about where his dinner came from.
Now get off my lawn!
Those things are old hat. Here's one that was in the news recently: http://www.petapixel.com/2011/10/17/the-leica-gun-for-wildlife-and-sports-photography/ but virtually all the major camera and accessory makers have done something similar at one time or another.
As cool as it is to have a gun looking camera, you get much more stability out of a camera on a monopod.
And to prove your hunting skills, you could use shorter and shorter prime lenses, which would force you to get closer to your 'prey.'
A screen filling head shot with a 30mm would be pretty impressive!
Definitely not a new idea. Caution - real hunting images at the last link.
http://www.hookertactical.com/Riflescope%20Eye-Cam.html
http://swfa.com/Elcan-DigitalHunter-Riflescopes-C3261.aspx
http://www.texashuntfish.com/app/forum/14845/Video-of-deer-shot-using-the-Elcan-DigitalHunter-DayNight-Riflescope-
...at a hunting and fishing show about a decade ago. Being a replica rifle, this product would need to have a highly visible tip and for many activities you would want a firearm for self defense anyway. The product I saw was camera integral to a rifle scope that could also be activated on the trigger pull.
There was an episode of The Professionals (1977-1981) where a hunter got a "shot of" a murder happening.
When asked if he meant "shot at" he showed the gun with a camera in the scope.
Fran
:):):)
1st 1st Poster of the new Millennium!
... I could take her out, buy her things and go anywhere with her... but I couldn't get sex. Sounds like "the friend zone gun" to me... you get to do everything except kill and eat the animal.
any fool can line up the crosshairs on a target. it takes control and skill to be able to get the bullet to hit the target you had in the crosshairs. fire a high caliber rifle and even a tiny twitch will get you off target.
this is a gimmick. unless it fires a blank or has a way to emulate the recoil and wind it's not proof of anything but having a lot of extra cash.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Rifles that shoot photos instead of bullets were already promoted in the 80's. I remember them in my old man's shooting magazines and on TV documentaries. Food for thought, consider such US patents as 4630911 (app. 1984), 4907022 (app. 1988) and 5845165 (app. 1997), as well as a whole host of others for all sorts of subtle variations on the same theme (such as patents often are).
As far as "ideas" go, there is nothing news worthy in the KillShot. I proffer that this article is nothing more than an advertisement.
Just buy a good DSLR and spend the bulk of your money on a fast long lens. A 300mm f2.8 telephoto lens will cost you a lot, but it's worth it for wildlife photography. Either that or just go to the zoo.
These were quite popular in Soviet Union back when I was growing up (80s), and the name for the hobby of photographing wildlife was actually (fotookhota), literally "photo hunting"...
Paul B.
This looks like a good way to get shot/arrested by suspicious cops. I'd rather have a photosniper kit, at least it doesn't look too much like an actual weapon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosniper#Photosniper
all the White House press core. Would be fantastic.
By putting: "Think of how great this would be at sporting events or family reunions!" at the end of the summary you've guaranteed a fucked discussion, way to fucking go. Lets not discuss this, just talk about how fucked up it would be to have these at sporting events and the hilarity that would ensue.
I'm sorry but rifle scopes with Camera's are nearly a decade old if not older, and yes for hunting purposes, rifle scopes in the half dozen thousand dollars for LE to train and then record in a shooting situation their marksman have been around for much longer.
This is hardly news. If anything its designed with a slight anti-hunting aspect to the way the blurb was written. To start a flame war perhaps?
Holling had one of these on an episode of Northern Exposure way back in the '90s. Cool idea- I wanted to make one, but it wasn't worth the trouble before DSLRs were around.
Anyone who has actually done anything with rifles should know that one of the fundamental rules is: don't point your gun at anything you don't want to shoot. By encouraging people to point these guns at people to take pictures, that is taking all safety out of the picture; imagine what these people are going to do once they have a real gun.
I can't eat a picture. Well, I can, but it's not as satisfying.
I'm 100% (one hundred percent) certain that this has been done. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=camera+gun+stock Congratulations on the "innovation." The only difference I see between this and other implementations of a camera integrated into a gun stock is this one isn't obviously a camera; definitely a *key* feature.
I'm planning a hunting safari to the USA (yeah I know you dont have real lions or elephants outside of zoos, and that most of your buffalo have been killed long ago).
But I believe there are some friendly TSA agents at your airports who would just love to have their picture taken.
Maybe one has to be a hunter to understand this thinking, but... why in the world wouldn't they just use a normal camera instead? Why does it have to look like a rifle?
Another option would be the Bush Hawk product line. It's a grip with trigger, and you mount your SLR camera on it. It doesn't look much like a gun, but if the resulting photos are the goal, rather than the "shooting", it might be an interesting alternative.
http://www.bushhawk.com/
Where we have more than 275,000,000 GUNS in private ownership. Screw the NRA!
From TFS "Think of how great this would be at sporting events or family reunions!"
Any idiot who brought something that looked like a hunting rifle to my family reunion and started pointing it at my kids would soon be getting the good news from my good friend Mr Cricket Bat
Guns are for killing things. If you want to take photos use a fucking camera, long lens and tripod rather than acting out your childish Ernest Hemingway fantasies.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
... until the SWAT team mistakenly takes you down.
You just sound like someone who doesn't want to think about where his dinner came from.
That's a straw man argument. I acknowledged the need to kill things. I don't debate that. I said that getting enjoyment from it is sick.
I don't respond to AC's.
In an episode of Danger Man from 1966 called "The Man With the Foot" there was a rifle that worked as a long range movie camera that they used to film the trapping of wolves for tagging.
that's actually a great idea, i was already worked up over the title because it would be a very humane idea to take a picture of what you're about to remove from existence forever ... some kind of morbid preservation urge when it comes to the past they've wasted? but this sounds great, how it will come down with people kicking on the feeling of power they get somehow from pulling that trigger from i dunno how far away against a defenseless animal for sport, i don't know. But it is a great idea if ever there should be a ban on weapons it should be hunting weapons. There's way less wildlife to spare than humans if i may be so bland as to explain it in a few words
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?