Claim: A Las Vegas business has been conducting "hunts" of naked women for customers armed with paintball guns. Status: False. Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2003] www.huntingforbambi.com Is this site for real? If it is I weep for the future... Origins: Another cruel real-life example of the shocking degradation of women, or a big put-on? That's the question being raised about Hunting for Bambi, a Las Vegas-based business which purportedly offers "hunters" the opportunity, for $10,000, to stalk naked women and shoot them with paintball guns. According to the Hunting for Bambi site, the business they're promoting is: If you would like to fly out to wonderful fun filled Las Vegas, Nevada for the hunt of a lifetime now is your chance. You can actually hunt one of our Bambi babes and shoot her with paintballs while we film the whole thing and tape it for your own home video. We will send you a complete list of wall hangers to choose from once your reservation is confirmed for your hunt. With over 30 women ready to be chased down and shot like dogs we guarantee a wide variety of Bambi's to choose from. Whether it is the girl next door or a perfect 10 we have an abundance of these beauties. So if you are the ultimate sportsman and are seeking the ultimate adrenaline rush then come out to our ranch and shoot one of these trophies. Then take home the video of her mounted on the wall for all your friends to see.This is the gift for the person who thought he had it all. Contributing to the public's belief in this venture (a concept which has already been perpetrated at least once before, at Hunt Naked Women), is the typical non-probing coverage of it by television news outlets such as a local Las Vegas television station, KLAS-TV, and FOXNews, both of whom ran features on Hunting for Bambi (complete with footage of "hunters" in action) and proclaimed it to be real. However, the whole setup of the Hunting for Bambi site seems to be a deliberate attempt to shock and outrage, and it's all too easy for hoaxsters to fool reporters with demonstrations staged for their benefit (as notorious prankster Joey Skaggs has demonstrated time and again). Simply enlist a confederate to pose as a "hunter," hire a few girls to run around topless for half an hour, and make sure the event is recorded by your own cameramen. Meanwhile, nobody is actually shot, unless it's done carefully out of camera range while the reporter's attention is distracted elsewhere. Indeed, the "hunter" in the KLAS-TV report just happened to be a local Las Vegas resident who lived in a tiny condo in one of the less desirable parts of town yet supposedly managed to shell out the sum of $4,000 for a Bambi-hunting excursion. Moreover, given that he was "shooting" at several women whom the Hunting for Bambi folks claim are paid $2,500 each it they manage to elude the hunter's paintballs (and $1,000 each even if they don't), the economics of this alleged venture just don't work out. Unfortunately, reporting the sensational draws a far large audience than debunking it does, so rarely do reporters engage in the necessary legwork to separate lurid reality from manufactured hoax. The media all too often operate under the naive assumption that a hoaxster, having gone to a great deal of trouble to create, stage, and perpetrate a hoax, will simply come clean and announce the whole thing is just a joke the first time someone questions him about it — therefore, if a hoaxster insists his outlandish venture is legitimate, it must be real, and no further investigation is necessary. This phenomenon was exemplified by the KLAS-TV reporter who, finally having been clued in that perhaps she had been duped into reporting a phony story, incredibly went back and simply asked the potential hoaxster if he was operating on the level: Eyewitness News reporter LuAnne Sorrell went back to the scene, and asked Burdick directly if he had staged the hunt for the cameras, to which Burdick replied, "No. I'll tell you I wish I was that clever." Paintball, although intended as a game, is a potentially dangerous sport which requires full protective gear for safety, and allowing "hunters" to shoot at naked human targets is a recipe for disaster. (What woman in her right mind would allow people to shoot at her with paintballs delivered at a muzzle velocity of up to 200 MPHt but agree that she couldn't wear so much as protective goggles, protected by nothing but a vague rule that shooters are supposed to hit their targets below the waist only?) Even if the "Bambis" are willing participants who sign liability waivers, the potential for a multi-million-dollar lawsuit should one of them be seriously injured or killed is far too great. (Brass Eagle Inc., the leading paintball products company, has already asked Las Vegas city and country officials to investigate the purported Hunting for Bambi activities, as "the health and welfare of the women participants could be damaged or threatened by this undertaking.") Moreover, in common with most web-based business hoaxes, the Hunting for Bambi site displays a curious lack of contact information. No business address or phone number is to be found on the Hunting for Bambi site, and several readers who expressed interest in booking a "hunt" have told us their e-mail inquiries to the Hunting for Bambi folks went unanswered. Those are rather odd business practices for a legitimate company looking to book customers at $10,000 a pop. The reality is that Hunting for Bambi conducted no real "hunts" — the site was launched as nothing more than a storefront for selling spoof videos. (After all, $19.99 tapes and DVDs, and not $10,000 hunts, are the product advertised on the site's opening page.) They staged a phony dog-and-pony show for a credulous reporter who on bit the hook, and once the media began gleefully reporting the Hunting for Bambi concept as real, the publicity attracted the attention of potential customers who were genuinely interested in going on their own "Bambi hunts." The Hunting for Bambi "spokesman" then began talking about toning down the potentially illegal and troublesome aspects of their fictitious operation (e.g., allowing hunters to have sex with their "conquests," prohibiting the Bambis from wearing any sort of protective gear, using unmodified paintball guns with 200 MPH muzzle speeds) in order to turn it into a viable business: [Spokesman] David Krekelberg and the company's "master hunter," Michael Burdick, have taken steps to address safety concerns. "At first we just told our hunters 'Don’t shoot them in the head,'" he said. "Now the hunters are prohibited from raising the gun barrel above the waist level and if he does, it's game over and there are no refunds." Krekelberg also said that the guns were modified to reduce the velocity of the paint-pellet guns, which can have a muzzle velocity of up to 200 mph, and that the women are now given the option of wearing goggles and helmets in addition to shoes. Krekelberg said the year-old company, which originally was formed to market a hunting spoof videotape, has so far conducted about 20 of the "hunts," most of them in the desert outside Las Vegas. The bottom line is that Hunting for Bambi hasn't conducted 18 real hunts, or 20 real hunts, or whichever number they're claiming today. The only hunt they've conducted so far are bogus ones staged for TV cameras. Additional information: The game was up on 25 July, as news outlets finally started reporting what we'd been telling readers all along: The Hunting for Bambi video that has been sweeping the media in the past week or so is a hoax, city of Las Vegas officials said Thursday. No "hunts" have ever been sold, and no "Bambis" have ever been shot with paintballs, the officials said in concluding a weeklong investigation. "The bottom line is we are convinced as a city, based on the information we have, that ... some in the media were used as unwitting dupes to promote a private enterprise," said Mayor Oscar Goodman. "It would appear from all sorts of admissions ... that the purported Hunt for Bambi was a scam. That it was all staged. That there were actors and actresses and there wasn't even the real shooting of paintballs." City officials said the man who made those admissions was Michael Burdick, the self-professed mastermind behind the videos and the purported hunts of nude women in the Southern Nevada desert they portray. Burdick told several officials the hunts were staged events designed to fool the media so his video-selling operation would get free publicity, the officials said. Additional information: Officials: 'Bambi' an elaborate hoax Last updated: 25 July 2003 The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/bambi.asp
