Remote-Controlled Hunting? - Wild Texas Forums: Parks, Travel & Recreation

Shannon · 11-22-2004, 06:53 PM

I heard a little bit about a new website (based in San Antonio, Texas, I believe) that purportedly exists to allow people to hunt online by remotely sighting and triggering hunting rifles set up on an actual hunting ranch. While I hate to drive them traffic, the URL is live-shot.com so you can form your own opinions and read more about it from "the horse's mouth," as it were.

This does not sound like a good idea to me, on many fronts, and I was surprised to note the typically-slow-to-react Texas Parks & Wildlife actually has a position statement on remote-controlled hunting posted already!

What are your thoughts?

Turn Key · 11-22-2004, 08:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shannon

I heard a little bit about a new website (based in San Antonio, Texas, I believe) that purportedly exists to allow people to hunt online by remotely sighting and triggering hunting rifles set up on an actual hunting ranch. While I hate to drive them traffic, the URL is live-shot.com so you can form your own opinions and read more about it from "the horse's mouth," as it were.

This does not sound like a good idea to me, on many fronts, and I was surprised to note the typically-slow-to-react Texas Parks & Wildlife actually has a position statement on remote-controlled hunting posted already!

What are your thoughts?

Hi Shannon,

Saw this this morning on the TPWD web site and took a look at "Live Shot's" web page just now (thanks for the site reference). I was amazed that such a thing would be allowed to happen. I'm all for gun ownership and hunting (even though I don't care for the sport myself) but along with that comes responsability and accountability. I can't see how you can have this if the shooter is a thousand miles away in another state. Gun and hunting laws are at the state level. How do we enforce Texas law on a shooter in Nevada, Washington or worse yet, Japan??? When an accident happens (notice I said "when" not "if"), who's responsable and how is it settled?

There are many gun accidents yearly by hunters and non-hunters. These happen with the gun at least starting in the shooter's hands. We also have computers that glitch, hic-up, belch, freeze, lock and crash. Now we want guns to be controled by those computers through the same web system that will quit at a moments notice! I think not!

Just my 2-cents!

Happy Camping!

lost_but_found · 11-26-2004, 10:46 AM

:rolleyes: I heard about this on the radio the other morning and was appauled. I was going to post a rant on here about it but didn't want to stir anything up. I personally think that it is absolutely disgusting. I have no problems with gun ownership and all that, but this is just sick video gaming. There should be more honor to hunting than going online to kill animals for the fun of it. I would seriously hope that any hunters out there would feel the same way. I don't hunt myself, but I am not opposed to it either though. I just have too big of a hear to kill anything. But I feel that the way this "game" portrays killing something is truly scary.

JasonL · 12-14-2004, 07:57 PM

To some degree when things like these come about I tend to leave it to the courts and judges... this is pretty bad, but I have to stray to the side of technoligy as the winner on this one. One of those kinda things, the suffering for the faction of progress, something like that? More so, I think - lord what is to come next?

Turn Key · 04-09-2005, 09:01 AM

Heard on the news last night that our TPWD commissioners decided to make remote-controlled hunting illegal. Vote was unanimous. Hope that's the last we hear of that bit of stupidity.

Happy Camping!

Shannon · 04-09-2005, 03:04 PM

TPWD's ruling actually only affects remote-controlled hunting of native species (white-tailed deer, wild turkey, etc.) Exotics can still be hunted, and indeed this weekend will be the first hunt actually offered by the website that spurred all this controversy. We'll see how it actually plays out, I guess. At least the first remote "hunter" is actually a quadriplegic and on a respirator, so he would not otherwise be able to hunt... but it hasn't changed my original feelings on the topic much.

Turn Key · 04-09-2005, 05:53 PM

Quote:

At least the first remote "hunter" is actually a quadriplegic and on a respirator, so he would not otherwise be able to hunt... but it hasn't changed my original feelings on the topic much.

Talk about your "poster boy" for remote-controlled hunting!!! Amazing how some people will use others to further their agendas. Even more amazing is how easily people can be used for this purpose. Guess this isn't going to go away until something goes wrong.

Happy Camping!

Shannon · 06-01-2005, 07:22 AM

The Texas Legislature has passed a measure to make computer-assisted (Internet) hunting illegal if the animal being hunted is located in Texas. This law is broader in scope than TPWD's ban on Internet hunting of native game animals in the state.

Source: Houston Chronicle article