Hunt animals by remote control

This is hard to believe, but soon there will be a Web site where you can shoot animals from the comfort of your home. The gun is computer-controlled!

More after the jump.

Here's how Lance Ulanoff describes it in his PC Magazine column:

For all that's good online, and there's a lot of it--blogs, IM, Internet mail, commerce, community--there's also a wealth of very bad ideas. The latest one is a mindblower. People are actually preparing to use the Internet to hunt live game. No, you did not misread that last sentence. Lazy-assed hunters (those so fat that they can't get their beer bellies out from behind their computer keyboards) could eventually be able to see live animals on their display screen and then shoot a remote rifle to blow them away.

The actual site, Live-Shot.com, comfortingly describes this service as something to help people with disabilities:

We are currently working on a very comfortable, ADA compliant blind which will house the LIVE-SHOT shooting system. Once this and the perimeter fencing are completed, we will be able to offer a unique computer assisted hunting opportunity. Disabled and handicapped hunters, as well as others who would like to try this type of hunting, will be able to use our system.

Everybody in the computer industry is trying to come up with the next "killer app," but this takes that term a little too literally for my taste.

•  I heard this was outlawed in California..

  recently by the State Legislature.  Good on them.

   Simply the existence of this as a pastime is a national disgrace.

  by therion on Thu May 26, 2005 at 09:48:48 AM PDT

•  Old News

  Just outlawed in NC by legislature.

  by chuckles1 on Thu May 26, 2005 at 09:59:57 AM PDT

•  Thank you for this post

  Of course, I am the pale, limp haired liberal.  (Although I have lovely thick grey hair).  Well if people are so cavalier about mammals or fish beneath us -- why the hell would they care about us.  It is all a web -- it all works together.

  As an afterthought -- I remember the right talking about Rachel Cory (the young woman killed by a Caterpillar in Palestine) as limp haired.  It is so burned in my memory -- Make fun of women's treasures -- right?  That's your answer.  Answer this (obscene gesture)

  by xanthe on Thu May 26, 2005 at 10:18:07 AM PDT

•  Huntin and Fishin

  If you want a fascinating look at modern day hunting, may I refer you to The Outdoor Channel.  I happen to get it via the cable system at a home I have in Mexico and I find myself sometimes watching slack jawed at the goings on of modern hunters.

  For big game, it is pretty much no contest.  They are competing against  hunters equipped with vast array of technology:

  1 High powered rifles with telescopic sights enabling shooters to bag large game from as much as a half mile away or more.

  2- Camouflage clothing and blinds.

  3- Luquid de-scenters to remove human scent and rutting scents to help lure game intent on procreation.

  4- Tree stands and blinds which enable the hunter to hide high in trees above the sight lines of most game.

  5- Increasingly sophisticated game calls and decoys.  (In one episode I watched, a male turkey got his head literally blown off as he tried to mount a decoy - fill in your own joke here ladies)

  6- Food dispensers which can be staged in the woods to lure game to a central area for easier harvesting.

  7...even cameras which can be left in the woods and which trigger on motion or heat to document for the hunter whether game are coming to that location.

  Of equal fascination are the scenes of older men (and for some reason about 80 percent of them are clearly overweight) taking along young children and engaging in fits of what has to be characterized as euphoria after the child blows a hole in the side of a large animal.  These are commonly followed by breathless statements by the adult that this is what bonds children and parents.

  One show I watched had an older man and a girl who looked to be about 9 or ten years old, sitting inside what seemed to be the back of a pick-up camper bed and aiming a rifle out a window to bag a deer.  The little girl wound up doing the shooting and afterwards didn't seem to be wildly enthusiastic about what she had done but her "mentor" acted like he had just given her the wisdom of Solomon.

  I know this will stir up a flurry of defenders of the hunt, but these are my perspectives seen through the lens of modern cable TV and the industry's "packaging" of the realities of modern hunting.

  by dweb8231 on Thu May 26, 2005 at 10:33:02 AM PDT