Mouse Click Brings Home Thrill of the Hunt

Lockwood said he began exploring the concept in 2003 after he showed a friend a videotape of wildlife he recorded while hunting. His friend wondered whether a camera could be attached to a gun for use in long-distance hunting. Lockwood said he also was inspired by a Web site that allows users to "hunt" by clicking a mouse that takes photos with a network of cameras set up at wildlife sites. Lockwood registered his Web domain early last year and with several software programmers created the site, which became available to the public in January.

"Obviously, this does not appeal to most people who can get around," Lockwood said. "Most hunters would care less about hunting like this. I don't want to hunt like this."

Regulators and lawmakers in many places are trying to make sure that even people who do want to hunt remotely cannot. Virginia's ban will be the first in the nation. It will outlaw the possession of the equipment, in combination with the software, to allow a gun to be fired from a remote location. To hunt, a hunter will have to be with the rifle on the site of the hunt, said bill sponsor Del. G. Glenn Oder (R-Newport News).

"I had the only bill the NRA and the ASPCA both supported this session," Oder said.

In California, state Sen. Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach) introduced a bill that not only prohibits the establishment of Internet-hunting sites in the state but also forbids residents from using businesses such as Live-Shot, and from importing, exporting, owning or confining any bird or mammal taken by or used in remote hunting. The California Senate passed the bill, and it now moves to the state Assembly.

"This is the kind of technology I associate with war -- like drones -- not with sport," Bowen said.

"In fact I heard about this and I thought about the Texas book depository," she said, where Lee Harvey Oswald, reportedly aiming from a sixth-floor window, shot President John F. Kennedy in 1963 as his motorcade drove through downtown Dallas.

"Is this going to become part of the to-do list on your desk? Update calendar, finish memo, kill deer, pay bills?" Bowen asked.

Organizations representing hunters -- including the Arizona-based Safari Club International, the Texas Wildlife Association and Buckmasters, which arranges hunts for disabled people -- have called Live-Shot the antithesis of their sport.

"Hunting is totally experiential. You immerse yourself in it: You're outdoors, the animal has a fair chance," said Kirby Brown of the Texas Wildlife Association. "This falls off of the ethical charts."

But for Dale Hagberg, a quadriplegic in Ligonier, Ind., Live-Shot is the only way he can hunt after being paralyzed in a diving accident almost 18 years ago. The 38-year-old was an avid bear and deer hunter in his teens, but now is dependent on a ventilator and unable to sit up in a wheelchair for more than a few hours at a time once a week. He has used Lockwood's site about a dozen times to target shoot and four times to hunt but has yet to bag anything. He uses his mouth to manipulate a joystick that moves a remote camera to zoom in and out of the target area on the ranch in Texas and to aim.

During a six-hour hunt last weekend, Hagberg used the joystick to swivel the Remington from afar.

Several times, Hagberg focused the cross hairs on a group of deer that wandered into the camera's line of vision. But in telephone consultation with Lockwood, who serves as the hunt guide and who loads the rifle and disengages the safety when the hunter is ready to shoot, Hagberg decided not to fire.

"I just want to wait for the blackbuck to come," Hagberg said later in a telephone interview. "It's not about killing them. I really enjoyed watching" the deer.

Hagberg said he understands the opposition to Internet hunting, but this is what he has to say to critics: "I think if they walked in my shoes for a while or knew someone like me, they'd feel differently."

He has paid $1,300 to bag a blackbuck -- the price that Lockwood paid to stock the animal on the ranch -- and he will keep trying to get the spiral-horned antelope from his bed in Indiana, Hagberg said. His best friend, a taxidermist, has promised to make a wall mount, and Lockwood will arrange for a processor to send the meat to him.

"We'll do this until that happens," Lockwood said, "or this becomes illegal."