John Lockwood says all he wanted to do was help people with disabilities and soldiers overseas experience the joy of hunting and shooting wild game.

But the Texan’s controversial venture into hunting over the Internet and allowing people to fire a rifle with the click of a mouse has left Kansas advocates for the disabled and wildlife experts in a quandary.

“I definitely think it’s something worth looking at,” said Cecil Walker, a disabled outdoorsman who works at the Regional Center for Independent Living in Iola.

“I have a lot of concerns about it,” said Mike Hayden, director of the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.

Lockwood has been the center of controversy since last year when he started developing a Web site that would allow someone thousands of miles away to use a computer to remotely control a rifle with a camera mounted on it. When an animal such as a deer strolled into sight the “hunter” would zero in on the animal via the computer and click the mouse to fire off a round.

Too easy?

The wild game animals and the remote controlled gun stand are on a ranch belonging to a Lockwood friend. Lockwood or employees retrieve the slain animal and have it processed for meat to be sent to the shooter or to a taxidermist.

The site, Live-shot.com, caused such a stir that lawmakers in several states introduced laws to ban Internet hunting because they claimed it made hunting too easy and unsportsmanlike. Even Lockwood’s own state took action against him. Last week both houses of the Texas Legislature passed a bill banning Internet hunting.

Hunting for game use to mean early sunrises and the smell of gunpowder after discharging your rifle with your dog at your side. Enter the 21st century and Internet hunting, where one Web site, based in Texas, lets you point the camera at your target hit the fire button, all while your dog stays at your feet in the comfort of your own home.

In a telephone interview last week at his home in San Antonio, Lockwood said he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

“I figure most people who have the ability to go out in the field would prefer to do it that way,” he said. “I don’t know why they would have a problem with people who don’t have the opportunity to get out and who want to do it the other way.”

But while Lockwood said his target customers were the disabled and military personnel away from home who would like to hunt to provide food for their family’s dinner table, his site is open to anyone.

“It’s not my place to be reverse discriminatory, I don’t think,” he said.

Kansas so far is not among the states that have introduced or passed bills preventing Internet hunting. That’s because nobody has attempted to set up such a Web site here, Hayden said. If somebody does, the state’s Department of Wildlife and Parks Commission will have to make some decisions, he said.

Hayden said he also has questions about how ethical Internet hunting would be, and whether it gives the Internet hunter an unfair advantage over the animals.

“It virtually eliminates or violates ‘fair chase,'” Hayden said. “That is a grave concern to those of us concerned about ethics.”

As for providing Internet hunting for the disabled, Hayden noted that Kansas already has special provisions and programs that help the disabled hunt.

“While I have recognition that the disabled have special needs, I don’t think that this really answers those special needs in a way that can be made to work very well,” he said of hunting by Internet.

A viable option

Another outdoorsman, Chuck Spellman, also questioned whether the Internet is what true hunters really want. Spellman is a Kansas University senior scientist at Assistance Technology for Kansans in Parsons, which is a branch of the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies. He is involved with research and service programs for the disabled.

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Live-Shot.com

“Most people who hunt like to do it because they want to be with their friends; they want to watch their dogs work; and they want to be outdoors with the wildlife activity,” said Spellman, while emphasizing he wasn’t speaking for the disabled.

Walker, the Iola independent living advocate, has been disabled since a traffic accident several years ago. He has taken advantage of Kansas’ special provisions for disabled hunters but had never heard of Internet hunting. He thinks it is an option that should be available to the disabled.

“I don’t have any special objection to that,” said Walker, who also founded the Fishing Has No Boundaries program for the disabled. “There are a lot of people who just can’t get out.”

The first Internet hunt on Lockwood’s Web site occurred in January when a friend shot a wild boar from a computer 45 miles away. Lockwood, however, had to finish the boar off with a couple of shots at the ranch.

Lockwood maintains shooting game over the Internet is harder than doing it in person. He noted that in April, in only the second hunt on the Web site, a disabled man in Indiana spent nine hours over two days waiting for a target to present itself on the rifle’s camera, Lockwood said. Finally, two fallow deer showed up but the Indianan could never line up a good shot. The deer would move just as he was ready to shoot.

“From what we’ve seen and the amount of time we’ve put into it, it would be far easier to be there on site,” Lockwood said.

A third Internet hunt was initially scheduled for a man in London but had to be canceled first because of the weather and then because of the Texas ban, Lockwood said.

Wave of the future?

Because of the Texas Legislature’s action, Lockwood no longer offers Internet hunting. His Web site does offer target shooting, however. The Web site has about 350 members who pay $14.95 per month. In fact, most of the interest has been in target shooting, he said.

“I haven’t been put out of business,” he said.

Even if he can’t provide Internet hunting, Lockwood thinks others in foreign countries eventually will. He said he had heard talk of hunting Web sites possibly appearing from Africa.

Hunting via the Internet was something Jefferson County hunting guide Mike Nickels had never heard of, but he said he wasn’t surprised to know someone had come up with the idea.

“I really don’t have an opinion on it,” Nickels said. “Technology is such a strange thing. You’d never anticipate that you’d have to have a law that says you have to be on site to fire a weapon.”