A mock-up of American Road Hunter debuted this Saturday at the 2008 SHOT Show.  Despite the fact that road hunting-the practice of shooting game from a vehicle-is illegal in all 50 states, NRA advertising/sales representatives working the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center are telling potential advertisers that space is limited and that magazine is expected to hit newsstands this summer.  A letter from the NRA’s Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer, Wayne LaPierre, is included in the media kit. 

“Road hunting is against the law now,” writes LaPierre.  “But the NRA expects legal challenges to that in coming years.  We will also proudly support such action as the long-standing persecution and bias aimed at road hunters is nothing but a thinly veiled assault on the God-given rights of gun owners.”

Road hunting gun owners need a voice, according to LaPierre, and the NRA is uniquely positioned to help represent their interests with “a quality publication celebrating this fine sporting tradition.”     

“I started hunting on the road,” says Wayne Ferguson, a SHOT-attendee and gun shop owner from Virginia, who says he’s impressed with the idea.  “I’ll definitely be subscribing along with, probably, most my friends.”

Ferguson is a small game hunter who has fond memories of potting roadside rabbits, pheasants, and grouse with his grandfather back in the early 1970s. 

“Those were some good times,” says Ferguson.  “The best.”       

Unlike other hunters for whom the word “tradition” conjures memories of “long cigar-sucking slogs following a fine bird dog through the autumn covers seeking game,” Ferguson says his best memories are of road hunting with his grandfather, who tragically lost his leg and both buttocks while fighting the German army at the close of World War II.

“Pap used to wedge a phone book up under where his ass used to be,” says Ferguson.  “He used one of his crutches to work the gas pedal, which meant I had to pull double-duty holding the rifle and watching the ditches for any rabbit or pheasant holding tight along the road.

“I can still smell the gun powder and hear the ringing in my ears,” says Ferguson, adding that the only bad thing about road hunting from his perspective is that a .22 going off in the close confines of an automobile sounds like an elephant rifle to a boy who forgets to stick his fingers in his ears.

The American Road Hunter promises to help with problems like that.

According to the editorial calendar provided in the magazine’s media kit, how-to articles appear to form a large portion of the content as well as product reviews.               

There are tips and techniques (for example, why power windows in a vehicle are better than manual ones for single-handed elevation adjustment when shooting long range) and a regular section called “The Roadie” made up of reader’s stories of road hunting blunders and sometimes hilarious run-in with conservation officers from across the United States.  “Road Tools” is the name of a column devoted to reviewing everything from sub-sonic rifle cartridges and night-vision scopes to the newest in trucks and ATV’s.          

At time when studies are showing a clear and steady drop in hunter participation and recruitment, hunting organizations who frown on road hunting now might soon change their tune.

Hunting is in trouble and the NRA says the sport needs all the support it can get.

“It’s a sad fact that most hunters have been hoodwinked into believing that road hunting is unethical-an affront to true sporting ideals-despite there being little concrete data to back up the charge,” writes LaPierre.

In the advertising information, the NRA also makes a compelling argument that Americans are lazy and overweight and, therefore, far more inclined to try hunting if they can do it from the warm and relative comfort of a vehicle.      

“In the minds of many sportsmen, a motorized vehicle is nothing more than a mobile hunting blind,” says LaPierre.  “The bottom line is: road hunters are gun owners.  Period.  United we stand, divided we fall.” 

FARGO, ND -

“These days, our office gets concerned whenever we hear about somebody smoking something,” says a detective for the North Dakota State Police who requested anonymity while the inquiry continues. “Since this case potentially involves the misuse of natural resources, it was a joint operation with conservation officers from Fish and Game.”

According to notes taken by the detective close to the case, the hunter boasted to friends and, later, on the internet that he “didn’t have a clue” there was a big buck anywhere near the farm he was hunting on the afternoon of November 23rd.

“The man told us he was just sitting there along the edge of a cut cornfield ‘bored witless’ and thinking about calling it a day when the eight point whitetail appeared,” says the officer quoting his report. “Right away he recognized the animal as ‘a good one’ and ‘smoked that hog-daddy’ right on the spot.”

Since there are no laws currently on the books against smoking anything where wildlife is concerned, charges were not filed against the hunter. Nor can the individual’s name be released.

But even more disturbing, according to officials close to the case, is that the investigation revealed that smoking wildlife is more prevalent and wide spread than this seemingly isolated incident on a remote farm in central North Dakota.  Some are even calling it the latest in a series of disturbing new trends among both rifle and bowhunters.

On the website www.druryoutdoors.com, Joseph Gizdic, a bowhunter describing himself as “a Freshman Drury Team member” posted pictures and a detailed account of smoking a “velvet 150+ buck.” It reads in part:

He stepped out and we knew he was a shooter.  Another velvet 135″ 8-pt was with him. When he came in, the bigger buck stopped at 35 yds, and I smoked him with a Rage and the New Dream Season X-Force by PSE.

While the practice seems primarily focused on whitetail deer, on the internet and television hunters are now flagrantly admitting to smoking groundhogs and, even, wild turkeys.

“I’d been hunting that longbeard for two sleasons [sic] so when I finally had him in range I not only smoked his ass I did a little dance over him when I was done,” reads the post on a popular website devoted to turkey hunting.

“I was like whose [sic] the man! Who’s your daddy! He wasn’t quite dead and he’s a turkey so, you know, it wasn’t like he could talk. But I could see it in his eyes. That bastard knew I owned him.”

On other forums, such as www.bowcountry.com, hunters are actually offering opinions on weather the “hunter’s high” one experiences when smoking a trophy buck is better with rifle or bow.

I have attached a picture of a deer that I killed back on the 6th of November. He is a nice 18 inch wide 9 point. Not the biggest but not the smallest. Nice trophy for these parts. I was unable to take him with a bow so I shot him with my gun, I just could not let him go. Now the dilemma is since I smoked him another has come along to tend his doe’s. I vowed I would not take him with a gun and I won’t however would you kill this deer with a bow?

Right now, it’s unclear where all this is headed or what it all means. But conventional law enforcement officials and wildlife experts at North Dakota Fish and Game are worried and believe it might take federal involvement to fully understand what appears to be, at best, a questionable practice and, at worst, potentially illicit new trend.

MUSKEGON

Stemming from charges that the Mississippi-based company knowing made false claims to deceive and profit from “tens of thousands” of hunters, outdoor retailing giants Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops, and Gander Mountain have also been named as co-conspirators in the case.

The lawsuit claims these businesses along with a handful of other, lesser-known licensing agents “made millions” by duping hunters with a “determined, coordinated, and highly deceptive effort” to exaggerated the effectiveness of their product.

Toxey Haas, the creator of Mossy Oak and founder of Haas Outdoors Inc., said the suit is totally without merit and that his company planned to fight it.

In a statement filed through their lawyers, the yet unnamed plaintiffs in the case insist that—in spite of being clad in Mossy Oak camouflage from “ball cap to briefs”—they have collectively “been busted by trophy-racked bucks at least a half-dozen times” this archery season alone.

The statement goes onto say that millions of hunters actually believe it when a company like Mossy Oak makes claims that their “camo won’t give [a hunter] away, but the loud pounding in his chest might.”

An attorney for Mr. Hass countered that “frankly, this ranks up there as one of the stupidest things he’s ever heard.”

In a counter statement provided to reporters, Hass’s lawyer cited pending litigation against another outdoor clothing manufacturer, Scent-Lok.  Last month, a group of

    “This is becoming a disturbing trend,” said Haas’s attorney.  “Such lawsuits are a black eye not on the hunting garment industry, but rather hunters themselves.

The five-page rebuttal points out how the general public is increasingly less tolerant of hunting, in many places, due to the very idea of people running around the woods with lethal firearms and bows.

    “The people behind these lawsuits actually want us to believe that millions of gun and bow toting hunters are so foolish as to think there are products out there that will make them disappear?  It makes every camouflage-wearing hunter look like idiot.”

PEÑITAS, TX –

    “They were dressed in camouflage Scent-Lok® suits from head to foot,” says federal agent Juan Salizar of the McAllen Border Patrol Station who made the surprise discovery.  “They sure looked the part. ”

Scent-Lok® garments—a high-dollar specialy line of clothing used by hunters to fool the wary noses of big game animals like whitetail deer and elk—utilize what the Michigan-based company calls “odor eliminating” technology.

According to the Scent-Lok® website, “Activated carbon has millions of microscopic pores, cracks and crevices which attract the scent particles and create a bond within the carbon.  These particles are trapped while air is allowed to breathe through the fabric. This process is called ADSORPTION.”

With a liberal dose of pseudo-science, combined with the relatively low IQ of the average hunter and a high-profile marketing campaign that includes outfitting every major television outdoor personality with a closet full of free Scent-Lok® gear, most hunters nowadays are convinced you can not possible go into the woods without an entire Scent-Lok® outfit and a mouthful of Gum-o-Flage.

(Note: Gum-o-Flage is another scent-control product designed to eliminate bad breath for hunters trying to fool the wary noses of big-game species like whitetail and elk.)

Maybe hunters aren’t as dumb as they seem.

Says agent Salizar, during Friday’s routine stop and questioning of a pickup truck driver, the only thing that gave the first two illegals away was a “flopping” noise he heard when one of the Mexicans fell onto the pavement under the vehicle.

According to Salizar, the individual then moaned—“Ouchy wawa!”  Salizar looked under the vehicle and saw the camo-clad individual.

    “He gave me a little smile and a wave,” remembers Salizar.  “But I suspected something wasn’t right.”

Salizar called his supervisor who ordered mandatory inspections of every pickup truck passing through the station.  Checks revealed 10 more undocumented immigrants wearing Scent-Lok® suits and hidden in similar fashion.

    “They might have gotten away with it had that first individual lost his grip on the undercarriage of the truck.  The dog had sniffed around the entire vehicle and never knew they were there.”

Border Patrol K-9 units are trained not only to find drugs but also people trying to slip over U.S. borders illegally.  Federal agents like Salizar, of the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector station, usually see attempts to smuggle people in boxes, packing crates, or concealed behind false walls and floors built into big rig style shipping trucks.

    “We’ve seen them pack the boxes with onions, hot pepper, rotten tomatoes—anything to try and fool the dog’s nose—but nothing has worked until this,” says Salizar, adding that the $200 to $300 dollars it might cost to buy an entire Scent-Lok® outfit is nothing to the individuals involved in the ruthless and lucrative business of “people smuggling.”

Officials say there’s no way to estimate how many people have already slipped over the border wearing Scent-Lok®.  But where there one there’s undoubtedly more.

    “If this stuff is really as good as they’ve been saying, it was only a matter of time until the wrong people got their hands on it,” says agent Salizar.  “I believe it works.  You put a couple illegals in full Scent-Lok® suits and Friday’s events proved the best sniffer dog in the world’s not going to find them.”

ITHACA, NEW YORK —

What officers had discovered is largest scam ever perpetrated on the American gun buying public, says Peter Starkle, the owner of the house arrested on Monday who claims to be a private test-target making contractor working for no less than three of the U.S.’s top gun makers.

    “Making sub-MOA [minute of angle] test targets is really a work of art,” he says. “But it has nothing to do with real world hunting and shooting. It has to do with selling guns.”

Currently being held on accessory to fraud charges at the Tompkins County jail, Starkle claims to be a member of the Test-Target Making Guild of America but says trade secrets prevent him from revealing just exactly how test targets are created.

    “Let’s just say firearm makers definitely aren’t wasting real bullets anymore than they’re willing to trash a rifle that doesn’t shoot up to some arbitrary standard.”

Firearm makers contacted to refute Starkles claims said the charges where everything from “blatantly unfounded” to “patently insane.” Spokesmen from Beretta/Tikka, Jarrett Rifles, and Remington hung up without offering comment at all.

But Starkle says he’s been in the business of test-target making for years.

    “The idea that test-targets found in the box with rifles made by Weatherby, Kimber, Remington, Howa—all the major players—were shot by the actual rifle purchased by the consumer—That’s a lie firearm manufacturers have been peddling for over a decade.”

Next to gushing “adver-torial” provided by gun writers who, Starkle insists, “would gladly give a kidney for free product or the free, exotic hunting trips often provided by gun makers” under the guise that they are stringently testing new products, the most important factor influencing the sale of a high-end production or semi-custom firearm is how the rifle or pistol can potentially perform on paper.

    “Look at the sporting arms being produced nowadays,” says Starkle. “American rifles are as beautiful to behold as a turd. They are cheap looking because they are. You could easily make an argument that out-of-the-box accuracy at the cheapest possible price matters more to hunters and shooters than anything else. So you just put a test-target in the box with a three-shot group measuring less than an inch and, with the Internet, word gets around fast. All of a sudden there’s a legion of camo-clad doofuses willing to pay an extra five-hundred dollars for the rifle whether it really shoots that well or not.”

According to Starkle, with the increasing legal costs of defending themselves against liberal politicians and the anti-gun lobby—plus what Starkle calls the “Wal-Mart-a-lization” of our economy—gun makers are constantly thinking of new ways to shave production costs.

    “The big manufacturers would secretly prefer not to put test targets in with rifles at all,” he says. “But it’s become a valuable marketing tool in recent years.”

Starkle asks hunters and shooters to consider how many rifles and pistols they’ve owned that shoot as well at their private gun club, let alone in real hunting situations, as the test-target in the boxes said they should.

    “All the gun buyer sees are three holes in the paper. And when that person fails to consistently achieve the same level of accuracy at home, what happens,” asks Starkle. “Here come a legion of magazine editors and gun writing shills to tell you to buy more stuff.”

Starkle says he’s heard gun writers blame inconsistent groups on everything from cleaning products and simple human error to his personal favorite:

    “They tell people to experiment with as many different kinds of ammo as they can afford, which in turn lines the pockets of the gun industry even further,” he says. “It’s all a scam and I’m happy to be out of it.”

When the leaders in the American gun industry are separated by a profit measured in pennies, Starkle says, test-target making will soon be going the way of hand-finished stocks, hand cut engraving and checkering.

    “Some companies are already outsourcing the work to third world countries,” he says, “Now they have a bunch of underage Haitians burning clover-leafed holes in targets with a smoldering cigarette butt. I’m actually a little relieved the police caught me. It was time to get out.”

Mike Stone, father of Jamison Stone the 11-year-old boy who inexplicably made national headlines after he killed a 1,051-pound hog a low-fenced game farm near Pickensville, was already on the defense after an on-line report on stinkyjouranlism.com suggested the monster pig photo as a fraud.

    “Contrary to what the news is saying we do not claim to have any kind of record.”

Now the word is out on Fred.  Just four days before he was killed, the portly porker was happily wallowing in the cool mud on the property of Rhonda Blissitt, a Fruithurst woman who was given the pig for a birthday present in 2004.

How poor Fred wound up a a game farm dodging hot lead is still a mystery.  What’s very clear, however, are the Stone family plans for their next wild adventure.

    “Please remember that as we work and hunt, it is also our God Given Right as Christians to hunt for the lost souls about us,” reads a statement under the heading “A Note From Jamison’s Dad” on the website www.monsterpig.com.

    “You do not need a license and you can hunt in any state or country. Those lost souls will truly be our greatest trophies in the end.”

    “I read that as a not-so-thinly veiled threat.  And now I’m scared,” says Mike “Boozy” Calhoun, a 45-year-old waste management engineer from nearby Millbrook and frequent patron at Dooley’s Irish Pub, a Millbrook-area watering hole.

    “Think about it,” says Boozy.  “This guy’s been attacked.  Now he’s been embarrassed.  If you read the note it’s pretty well clear the stupid fucker is a Jesus freak who thinks the unholy legions of Satan have been unleashed upon him.”

The Stone Statement was issued in response to what can only be called a Biblical flood of criticism from scores of doubters who disparaged everything from the “twisted motivation” behind aggrandizing the killing of what proved to be a farm-raised pet to the gross display of poor shooting that finally ended the massive pig’s life.

Stone insists the proprietors of the game farm, Lost Creek Plantation, told him Fred was a bonafide wild hog.  He also maintains he only had the best intentions when he later put up a website after his son’s “hunt.”

    “When this hunt was over we wanted to share this experience with our family and friends from around the country. I got tired of e-mailing pictures so I built my son’s website, (that is why it does not look very professional) never knowing that a few weeks later the world would be at our door.”

That world now seems to include an underworld of Satan’s un-holy minions who, Stone believes, are all in desperate need of his prayers. 

    “Many of the naysayers seem to make fun of the fact that we are Christians and that is certainly fine by us,” says Stone.  “It makes it easy for us to see who needs prayer and we are happy to provide it.  In one case an e-mail was filled with so much hate that I felt compelled to send them back a prayer commanding the evil to leave the person and make way for God’s Holy Spirit to come in and bring Joy and Peace to their life.”

    “Prayers for joy and peace are one thing,” says Boozy Calhoun.  “But Jesus H. Christ!  The guy obviously isn’t very bright.  And we know he has a gun.  Talk about a Holy Spirit.  If he could hit me, that thing could really tear a hole in a sinner like me.”

WASHINGTON D.C. —

    “For over one hundred years, a major flaw in The Lacy Act has been the short-sighted provision that bans the sale of wild game, namely whitetail deer,” says Undersecretary for Natural Resources and the Environment, Mark Rey.

    Over a century ago, May 25, 1900, when President William McKinley signed the Lacey Act there were less than 300,000 deer in the United States. Today, biologists’ best guess places that number well over 13 million animals.

    “The fact is, meat labeled ‘free-range’ and ‘organic’ is an extremely popular grocery item right now,” says Rey. “No steroids. No growth hormones. Generally speaking, Americans might be the most grossly overweight people on the planet, but they still want food that’s good for them.”

    Compared to beef, venison is lower in fat and cholesterol, according to the on-line website www.askthemeatman.com. And with deer becoming an increasing problem in most suburban and big-city regions in America, the measure is expected to appeal to American voters and even knee-jerk opponents like hunters and animal rights activists.

    Why?

    Deer cause about 1.5 million deer-vehicle collisions each year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety. A representative from State Farm Insurance—the nation’s leading provider of car insurance—estimated that each accident caused an average of $2,800. That $1.1 billion in property damage each year and at least 150 deaths.

    “Non-hunting soccer moms are plowing into deer at an startling rate,” says a senior State Farms executive recently quoted in an on-line article. “It could happen on your way to work or while taking the kids to school. You just don’t know.”

    But what’s even a bigger problem, say some powerful leaders of the American meat and poultry industry, is all that prime venison going to waste.

     “Look at New Zealand,” says a top executive with the National Meat Association  who demanded anonymity as a matter of standard policy, “With exports to Europe, Asia, and United states totaling in excess of 29,000 tons, they currently lead the world unchallenged as the top, multi-billion dollar exporter of farm-raised whitetail deer.”

    While some hunting and animal rights groups are expected to vehemently oppose the measure, the consensus among Washington meat industry lobbyists is that both groups represent a very small minority of the American voting public. Gaining the support of middle America will be key.

    “This is proposal will pass,” agree executives from the National Meat Industry who wished to maintain anonymity when it came to discussing sensitive issues revolving meat and their handling of it, “because it’s a matter of life and death. Eating deer is good for your health. Hitting one in your car is not. The issue is as simple as that.”

“Right on time,” whispers Jamie “Al” Harrison.  “You see the browse line on that hedge?  Whoa, moma! Did they do a number on those arborvitaes or what?”

Gone for the weekend is the family that normally occupies the house, an immaculate two-story less than 10 miles outside Pennsylvania’s state capital,
Harrisburg.  Away for just two days, but if everything goes as planned tonight that’s more than enough time for Harrison to do his work.

Harrison, who might be the next unlikely soldier in the war on illegal immigration, is a burly plaid shirt and denim-wearing fellow.  Just home from an undisclosed Texas border town, he’s still sporting a suntan from a week in the desert testing an idea that—pending Department of Homeland Security approval—could make him the newest soldier the war on illegal immigration.

“Whether talking whitetails or wetbacks, I believe trapping is the most efficient and humane method of stopping the threat from invasive and nuisance species,” he says.

The shady streets and well-manicured lawns of Walden Woods, a south-central Pennsylvania subdivision, is a long way from the prickly pear, snake-infested desert banks of the Rio Grande.  And Harrison will concede that at least on the surface shrub-munching whitetail deer are not exactly desperate Mexican immigrants trying to slip across the American border.

“But the concept is the same,” Harrison says.

Watching the action play out in the backyard—the big doe slowly drifting toward the rest of the herd pawing in the mulch for tulip bulbs—Harrison reaches for a black box on the window sill.  It’s as big as a television remote with an antenna a single red button in the middle and looks like a bomb detonator, which in a way it is. Harrison thumbs the red button and waits.

“We’ll wait for them all to mosey on over to the buffet,” hisses Harrison. “Then we’ll turn this mother out.”

Harrison, a University of Penn State wildlife biology graduate, did his doctorate’s thesis on wild turkey reintroduction.  Working in the early-1980s with the National Wild Turkey Federation and the Pennsylvania Game Commission, he pioneered the use of rocket nets for capturing wild turkeys unharmed for use as transplant stock in states like Michigan and New York.

“You might say I’m a real ‘min-net’ man,” Harrison says.

It happened during those long hours waiting for the turkeys to come that Harrison—a self-described “longhaired liberal hippie-type back in the day”—had an idea.

“I just read an essay by Ed Abbey—‘Immigration and Liberal Taboos’—and I got to thinking: Mexicans sneaking into this country are as much a problem today as they were thirty years ago.  Why does the government waste so much manpower and money running around the desert trying to round up these people?  Or even worse trying to catch them one at a time when they’re already here?  Why not simply let them to come to you and let a little new-fashion technology round them up one gang at a time?”

Except for a brief stint as the owner and operator of a Philadelphia-area Critter Control franchise, Harrison has worked twenty years entirely as an independent after forming a non-profit company specializing in urban deer management.

“I went from answering old lady calls about trashcan raiding raccoons and squirrels clunking around in the attic to being outside fulltime, basically deer hunting for a living, which suited me just fine.”

Harrison opened his company in 1990 and specialized in suburban deer removal.  It’s here he worked to perfect his expertise and equipment–namely rocket nets, box traps, and other live-trapping devices—though, he points out, perfecting his netting equipment took twice along as he would have liked since most of his affluent suburban clientele preferred to rid themselves of problem deer on the cheap.

“It cost anywhere from two to five thousand dollars a job to trap and transfer a bunch of deer.  And then where do you take them?”

But as sharpshooter,Harrison charged only $200 to $300 a head.  He killed over 700 deer in just five years including one highly publicized and controversial deer removal operation at Philadelphia’s FairmontPark in the late 1990s.

“I was just doing my job.  People pay me to take care of problems.  Some kooky animal-rights bimbo wrote into World Net Dailey and called me a “Bambi Butcher.”  To show that kind of shit don’t get to me, I put it on all my business cards and sent that bunny-huggin’ bitch the first one.”

“After the World Trade Center bombings, I put my plan into high gear,” says Harrison.  “Everybody from President Bush on down was talking about finding new ways to fight the war of terror and that includes protecting our nation’s borders.  And here I am—some small-town hick from Piketown, P-A, who has the solution.”

What Harrison didn’t have, he says, was real proof that his trap and transfer plan can work.            

“I never actually tried netting people before so I didn’t have a clue how any of this would go down,” Harrison remembers.  So he called around and finally located a cattle ranch “south of San Antonio,” a 100,000-acre spread on the Mexican border owned by “a rancher plumb up to his ass in illegals.”

Armed with a video camera to document the test and one of his rocket nets armed with a motion-sensitive trigger mechanism Harrison developed the trap was set.

“The rancher took me right to a water tank—a concrete pool in the middle of the mesquite where cattle are supposed to come and drink—where the ground was covered with Mexican tracks.”

Harrison had the idea to scatter some empty Evian bottles around.

“I didn’t want anybody getting hurt,” he says.  “I wanted them to maybe bend over, you understand, maybe pick up those empty containers to fill up, so that if the net malfunctioned and fired out too low it wouldn’t clip off their fucking cabeza’s.” 

Setting up on a hill with the video camera,Harrison only waited an hour before the first group came through.

“There were six of them making a beeline for that water just like a herd of deer.  It all played out just like I pictured.  They bent over to pick up those containers and BOOM!  Cold busted!”

According to Harrison, they couldn’t have been happier to see him drive up.   

“They were a wretched looking bunch—looked like a bunch of greasy fish flopping around in that net.  I figured they’d want to try to make a break for it, but when I bailed out of the pickup with the shotgun fixing to hog-tie them, this skinny one who spoke English was like ‘Amigo.  Amigo.  Please help us.’  They basically kissed the feet of the Border Patrol after we carted them down to the nearest check station. Then it was back to Old Mexico for them.”

Back in Pennsylvania, the deer in the backyard are mingling, blissfully eating and unaware that they’re about to go from shrub-eating suburban pests to free venison steaks for the homeless.    

“The only difference between here and what went down in Texas is that these here interlopers will be dispatch quick and painless on the spot,” Harrison says.  “I’ll load them up and process the meat then turn it over to feed the needy…No waste, which is more than I can say for those sorry south of the border sombitches.”

Then he pauses to reflect, how far he’s come from his college days. Harrison isn’t dropping any names, but says Homeland Security officials are aware of his work and set to grant a multi-million dollar contract for trap and transfer work to begin in early 2007.

“When I was a younger all I wanted to do was trap and hunt.  I actually thought going into doing my graduate school work that I’d become a hunting guide or, maybe, run around the country like Will Primos making turkey hunting videos or something.”

And then he laughs.

“Guess maybe I am living my dream,” he says.  “I already got one video completed and any day now the word is going to come down and it’ll time to get after those turkeys again.”

INDIANAPOLIS, IN

Only 37, Myers, a Richmond area contractor and self-described “wheel-head” has been bowhunting for almost a quarter century.

“In twenty-five years bowhunting with modern archery gear I never missed a season without getting my deer,” he says.

But a foray in traditional archery changed all that.

“One day the sport started losing its kick,” he says, adding that advances in modern archery equipment have “significantly shortens the learning curve along the path to proficiency allowing any idiot to kill a deer.”

“I hadn’t missed or wounded a whitetail in decades,” he says.  “And this may sound crazy, but I started wondering, What if?”

For years, Myers had seen more and more people shooting longbows and recurves at local 3-D archery tournaments around his hometown of
Richland.

“We used to joke about the stickbows guys,” Myers recalls. “None of them could shoot worth a damn.  It was funny.  You’d be out on the course and hear arrows clanging off trees.  There’d be cussing and screaming and, when you’d walk up, behind every deer target there’d be some guy with a longbow scratching around in the leaves looking for a busted arrow.  I mean, they were really bad—terrible.”

Myers was intrigued.  Most of the traditionalists he spoke to couldn’t remember the last time they killed a deer.  But they had a way of making an empty freezer sound like a virtue.  And they all insisted they were still having fun.

“Fun is something that is lacking when you get to a point where you know any deer you settle your sights on is as good as dead.”

So Myers bought a recurve and a book recommended by his new friends—Instinctive Shooting by G. Fred Asbell, regarded by many bare bow enthusiasts as the bible of how to properly shoot a bow without mechanic sights.

“Asbell talked about how the bare bow archer can draw and shoot without thinking about distance,” Myers recalls.  “He wrote that shooting competitively had little to do with being able to shoot a hunting bow.”

By the last chapter everything Myers thought he knew about archery had changed.  And on the range Myers found himself changing, too.

Myers adopted Asbell’s more fluid, swing-style of drawing the bow.  He even adopted what he calls “the Asbellian crouch.”

“Unlike in target archery where you stand perpendicular to the target, Asbell recommends a more oblique stance and—this is key—bending forward at the waist when you face the target, bending your knees and leaning a little forward, too, almost as if you’re about to squat.”

Myer’s admits that the first time he tried it his instinct told him this wasn’t natural.

“It was uncomfortable as hell,” he says.  “But I pushed on.”

Myers shot a hundred arrows every day for months.

“I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn if I was standing in it,” he says.  But shooting so terribly and having no idea why only made me want to shoot more.  I was obsessed.  Something had to give.”

What gave was Myers’ back.  Doctors diagnosed a slipped disk compounded by a pinched sciatic nerve.  Then “target panic” set in.

“I followed everything in that damn book down to the letter and it not only turned me into a snap-shootin’ son-of-bitch…it also put me in traction for a week.  I’m on pain killers now.  Some days it feels like Satan himself is poking my in the ass with his pitchfork.”

In spite the poor shooting and chronic pain, Myers insists that for him the challenge and mystery of archery has definitely returned.

“What could be more mysterious then pulling back an arrow and having no fucking idea if the thing’s going to hit the target or not?” says Myers.  “Sure it’s hard and I’m miserable, but nobody ever said archery was easy.”