| Now, America has a new and dangerous quarry species that's emerged this year: the zombie. Of course, they don't exist... or do they?
It all starts right here in the swamps of Louisiana. Last year, a local hunter claimed he found his trailcam smashed. He retrieved the card from it and found this picture (see right). Fake or not, it has helped fuel a craze. For zombie target shooting. It's not just one company riding this bandwagon - there are loads offering cartridges, knives, chainsaws - chainsaws? Even brand giant Hornady has brought out a zombie bullet. The clue is it has a green tip. These targets with the weeping jammy goo are selling like hot cakes, and are coming in all shapes and politically incorrect sizes. Watch the film "It’s a 5 billion dollar industry between video games and movies, TV shows," says Bo Oseguera of Zombi Industries. "You know there is a new movie coming out with Brad Pitt and it’s just a growing industry and we are just getting a lot of great feed back, because zombies are such a huge thing you know they’ve got zombie ammunition, zombie fire arms throughout the whole show there’s countless products, people we’re working with want a program with us because if you have the zombie gun you need some zombies to shoot." Also protecting the American public from zombie attack are a range of special shotgun cartridges being advertised in this film. They come in a variety of gauges, .410, 20-bore but they are blanks and intended, say the manufacturers, for recreational use. Hmmm... whatever that means. "This round produces a tremendous amount of noise a huge muzzle flash, theatrical almost in its effect and again it’s recreational," says Neil Keegstra of Lightfield Ammunition. "It’s not for accuracy where you are putting holes in a target, it’s just for having fun with fire arms, if you do it safely." So, what if you accidentally mix these cartridges with real cartridges? "Not recommended by any," says Keegstra. "This is real bullets, real ammunition, it’s a real threat and it is not intended to shoot at people. If you are going to shoot at a zombie target or something along those lines fine, but all rules of fire arm safety apply. If you’ve got a real gun it’s a real threat so you have to treat it accordingly. So it’s not a recreational force on force type of paint ball load not by any means." Oh my God. The question remains: why are American shooters so keen on shooting zombies? Is it because they are human-like targets but don't come with the shame and guilt people feel when they shoot more 'human' human targets? "Some people might say that the reason we chose a zombie is because you are supposed to shoot zombies," says Oseguera. "If zombies are coming after you, you have got to destroy the attackers or the attack line so that is kind of what we wanted to do. You are not shooting a human target you are shooting a dead target." So, here you are: zombie targets - coming to a graveyard near you. |
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Wednesday, 22 August 2012
How to shoot zombies with real bullets
Go large! USA gun shops - watch and weep
| I visit an American gunshop. At 150,000 sq feet it is three times the space of an out of town British supermarket.
I am in Las Vegas and this shop is humungo fantasmagorically enormous. It’s a BassPro, one of three big chains which dominates hunting and shooting shopping. Watch the film Opinion is divided on whether Cabelas, Gander Mountain or Bass Pro is the best shop. They are certainly popular. The Cabelas in both Kansas and Minnesota rank amongst the top tourist destinations in both those states and they are twice as big as the one in Las Vegas. Bass Pro’s shop in Missouri is a third of a million square feet, that is the same size of 6 football pitches or the whole of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. British gun shops are traditionally poky little things stuck down back streets, but this is America. I am off to see a gun shop owner who I met hunting driven wild sheep in Germany. He runs a gun shop which is small compared to Bass Pro, but offers a warmer and more friendly service and it is still twice the size of any UK gun shop. "It’s a fair size, fair size for round here," says Jim McClain, owner of Jim's Fireamrs in Baton Rouge LA. "We’re pretty big here, but there are bigger stores." Louisiana is hurricane country and when Hurricane Katrina hit nearby New Orleans it caused both spectacular devastation and billions of dollars of damage. It was however, a bonanza for Jim. "It was very crazy time," says Jim. "Before you could buy your firearm and leave, it was about anything from six-to-eight hours for three days." Jim says he sold "Hundreds and hundreds" of guns in that time. "Literally we had one person doing nothing but calling in background checks, we had distributors coming in with literally truck loads of ammunition," he says. And why did everyone want these guns? "It was a time of unrest," says Jim. "People were fearful and looking for security, also a lot of military police fire department lost a lot their guns underwater so not only do you have civilians coming in, but you also have your local police departments buying guns, ammunition, holsters, cleaning supplies - just everything went under water so quickly." As well as the serious business of self-defence, Jim's Firearms is all about shooting in your leisure time. Of course all the staff at Jim's Firearms hunt. Jim's staff member Blayr Hofmeester is a dove, squirrel, deer, and coyote (sometimes) hunter. She has hog hunted. She grew up doing this. "Is this normal for a Louisiana girl?" I ask her. "Have you ever shot a gator?" "No I have not, I have caught one though. I was fishing one day and I was reeling in my spinner bate and it snapped my line and I reeled it in and I caught it. It was about 5 foot long. Jim shows me a two Taurus .410 revolvers and we take them - "very popular here for a snake gun for fish farmers and for deer hunters during the summer to maintain their land," he says. "They like this to despatch snakes. Big water moccasin, I hate those." I try shooting it and the shot spatters the target. If there had been a snake in a 4ft radius, it would have died. "Well, it’s a big snake," says Jim. Self defence is a major theme of American gunshops. In the UK, we have all but forgotten about sidearms following the restrictions which came in 15 years ago. With the London Olympics coming up and Britain in with a chance for shooting medals, with handgun crime rising massively in the wake of the handgun laws, surely now is the time for the British government to start relaxing restrictions on handgun ownership in the UK. |
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Louisiana hog hunting
| Americans enjoy hunting both of their hog varieties. There are the wild boar, known as the ridgeback, and the wild pigs, domesticated breeds, gone feral. The wild boar grow to around 300lb and have a reputation for being aggressive. The feral pigs are much, much bigger. We are going out for some feral hogs. My guide John has some property on Bayou Portage in the swamps of Louisiana that he says have been rife with them lately and we want to see if we can find a few of those. Watch the film We need to walk through the swamp to a high seat next to a wallow. First, I'm given my cowboy-style rifle. It's a lever-action Marlin 30-30, one of the guns that won the West. "Pretty standard American lever action, loads in here, lever here so, just cowboy style, to load it lever out, lever in it’s loaded," says my guide John. John's rifle is less cowboy, more militia. It's a modern version of the SKS, a forerunner to Mikhail Kalashnikov's AK47: ideal for pigs, especially decadent American capitalist running-dog scum pigs. With a slightly sicky feeling that keilers are hiding behind every tree, we head off. John says that the pigs are not scared by the torch beam - they can even be attracted by it - though their senses of smell and hearing are excellent. "You’ll find a lot of times tracks along side these sluice where they have come into wallow, or water and often times if you check the clarity of the water you can tell how lately they have been in," says John. "If it is very, very cloudy they have been in wallowing cooling down from the hot sun recently. This water looks fairly clear." "So that’s why we are whispering?" I ask. "Well I’m imagining they haven’t been through here for a bit," he replies, "so we’ll check another couple of wallows and try and spot some tracks off them." A few hundred yards in and if we get the unmistakable whiff of pig pee. John has been putting some old burger buns down and we can see they have been to this boggy Burger King. Suddenly, there's a lot of noise and something is coming towards us, fast. Both of us chamber around and raise our rifles. I feel a wave of immense relief tinged with disappointment when an armadillo breaks cover. I really thought we would be in touch with a pig there but quite relieved we’re not. America has big pigs. Really big pigs. And not all of them are called Bubba. There was one shot recently with a handgun by an 11-year-old lad in Alabama. A US record, it weighed more than 1,000lb. I am six feet four inches and can be easily impressed by a 5lb armadillo. Imagine how the kid felt. John and I stalk through the swamp, which has a gumbo-like consistency. Gumbo is a local stew that tastes exactly like it sounds. Soon we reach an old duck hide, or 'blind' in American. "So we’ve got a good 150 yards of visibility to take a shot on them," says John, "and as soon as we see them break those bushes we’ll hold off, give them a little time to get as close in front of us as we can, just stay trained on them the whole time, keep our scopes on them and as soon as they get close enough and we’re comfortable taking that shot we’ll put lights on them and fire away and see what we’ve got." We sit and wait, and we wait, then John reckons its time to go and see the boar face to face After the little scare earlier on, the approaching armadillo, John thinks it’s a good idea that we go after them on foot. Brilliant. Another wild pig hamburger joint, but this one looks undisturbed. John reckons we will have to put tonight down as unlucky. So we got to the end point, feeling a bit defeated by duck, bit beaten by boar, they haven’t touched the bait, but you cannot beat the excitement of stalking up on something that could easily be stalking up on you. It’s not a lion or a tiger, it’s a pig, but it’s a great big thing in a very dark wood and it’s absolutely brilliant. |
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