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Presence Examples From The Chicago Sun-Times In Texas, a mouse can kill a deer November 19, 2004 BY MARY VALLIS A Texas-based Web site is promising hunters worldwide the chance to shoot deer and antelope with the click of a mouse. At live-shot.com, subscribers can already shoot paper targets with a .22-caliber rifle mounted to a camera. Virtual hunters aim the camera and click a button to fire. Ten shots and 20 minutes cost $5.95. The service plans to expand soon to allow hunters in the comfort of their homes to kill live animals. Greg Stevens, a partner in the site, said it will appeal to disabled hunters who can't venture into the wild and those who can't afford a trip to Texas. Stevens and his partner, John Lockwood, own about 330 acres in southwest Texas. They hope to erect a fence on the ranch and stock it with exotic animals -- aoudad sheep, blackbuck antelope, wild hogs, fallow deer -- for the shooting pleasure of online customers. 'If you just had a gun for that' The men developed the idea while using fantasyhunt.com, a Web site that allows users to photograph wild animals using wireless solar-powered cameras. "We were looking at a beautiful whitetail buck and my friend said, 'If you just had a gun for that,'" Mr. Lockwood said. "A little light bulb went off in my head." A supervisor will oversee the hunt to ensure the camera does not malfunction. The staffer will also finish the job if the hunter's bullet does not kill the animal. The carcass could then be stuffed by a taxidermist and mailed to the hunter. Stevens estimates it will cost about $1,500 to shoot a blackbuck antelope online. Texas wildlife officials, animal rights groups and hunting associations are following their plans closely. Most hunters say the idea of virtual hunting is abhorrent, said Kirby Brown, executive vice president of the Texas Wildlife Association. "It's not hunting," Brown said from San Antonio. "Hunting is an ethical experience that involves being there. You have to be a part of the sights, the sounds."
From New Zealand's Stuff Online animal hunting may soon be reality 18 November 2004 Berger said state law only covers "regulated animals" such as native deer and birds and cannot prevent Underwood from offering internet hunts of "unregulated" animals such as non-native deer that many ranchers have imported and wild pigs. He has proposed a rule that will come up for public discussion in January that anyone hunting animals covered by state law must be physically on site when they shoot. Berger expressed reservations about remote control hunting, but noted that humans have always adopted new technologies to hunt. "First it was rocks and clubs, then we sharpened it and put it on a stick. Then there was the bow and arrow, black powder, smokeless power and optics," Berger said. "Maybe this is the next technological step out there."
From ESPN Outdoors Internet uproar: Shooting at live targets? 'It's an abomination!' Critics maintain there is nothing
natural about remote-controlled 'hunting' proposed via a By James A. Swan, Ph.D. According to Reuters article on the issue, Underwood stated that Internet hunting could be used by disabled people. I thought about it for awhile, trying to be open-minded. If he was offering this as a humanitarian gesture to military people wounded in combat and stuck in a hospital, I would not say anything, even though I believe that what he is offering is not hunting. However, Underwood is asking people to pay for this, regardless of their physical condition. That makes it open season for Internet "hunting." "It's an abomination!" declares Gray Thornton, executive director of the Dallas Safari Club. "The essence of hunting is in the experience of the outdoors and ethical pursuit of noble game on its terms, not reduced to a video game. That is an abomination of hunting." I spoke with leaders of several other national hunting organizations whose comments about the proposed practice included "sick," "insane" and "a blow to ethical hunters all around the world." I don't know about you, but when I go hunting, I assume there is no guarantee I get anything or even see anything. The act of hunting is more important than the kill. "In the act of hunting, a man becomes, however briefly, part of nature again," the noted psychologist Erik Fromm eloquently wrote. "He returns to the natural state, becomes one with the animal, and is freed of the existential split: to be part of nature and to transcend it by his consciousness." As a psychologist myself, I cannot see where any of these feelings can translate to hunting remotely over the Internet. Where there are no feelings, ethics are hard to grow. The Spanish philosopher y Gasset Ortega, writing in his classic "Meditations On Hunting," agrees with Fromm and goes on to say, "Every good hunter is uneasy in the depths of his conscience when faced with the death he is about to inflict on the enchanting animal." The emotional feeling of hunting is a combination of excitement and nourishment, as well as what African big-game hunter Robin Hurt describes as a mixture of "sadness and elation" at the prospect of killing an animal. Hunting makes man honest, because it forces him to get his hands dirty and bloody and take responsibility for the simple fact of life that "flesh eats flesh," as mythologist Joseph Campbell bluntly put it. The realization of the need to kill and the desire to seek some reconciliation within oneself, as well as with the animals hunted, is the reason why all great religions of the world offer ethical guidance on proper ways to hunt, as well as ceremonies to perform to honor the animals killed. Unless you get a paper cut, you ain't gonna get your hands bloody hunting via the Internet.
From National Public Radio interview Web Site Could Offer Live Hunting by Internet Proxy by Melissa Block All Things Considered, November 18, 2004 · NPR's Melissa Block talks with John Lockwood, the creator of a Web site that allows people, once registered as members, to target shoot with a real gun set up with the website. He hopes to introduce live online game hunting of exotic animals at his ranch in Rock Springs, Texas, but a state rule change could block that. |