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Gifts for all occasions in the Galleria! Add your comments on this week's "What is the Deal?" column at Uncle Hiram's Bulletin Board. July 20, 2003 What is the Deal with Hunting Naked Women? By Jan A. Larson Michael Burdick is a businessman. Consistent with the capitalistic goal of finding a need and filling it, Burdick has apparently struck gold with his "Hunting for Bambi" enterprise in Las Vegas. For $10,000 any "big game" hunter can spend some time in the Nevada desert stalking naked women (save tennis shoes and goggles) with a paintball gun. The women are paid $2500 if they manage to avoid taking a hit, but even if they are "gunned down," they can salve their wounds with a $1000 consolation prize. Obviously there has been an outpouring of outrage when this story was broken by Las Vegas television station KLAS and subsequently picked up by the national media including FOX News and MSNBC. Women's groups denounced the game as just another exploitation of women, but it appears that no one is forcing the "wild game" in these hunts to participate. In fact, considering the likelihood that most, if not all, of the women participants have few (legal) alternatives for generating that level of income, it seems that we should be thankful that a handful of risk-taking ladies have found gainful employment. Other critics caution that the game might be dangerous for men who have problems distinguishing fantasy from reality. Please. Tiddlywinks can be dangerous for men that can't distinguish fantasy from reality. Personally, I find this "game" to be a bit juvenile, but when there is money involved, juvenileness has never stood in the way of entrepreneurs, witness the current crop of reality programs on television. Outrage and psychological analysis aside, is there anything fundamentally wrong with this enterprise? By all accounts the participants are all adults. It appears that no laws are being broken. There have not (so far) been any serious injuries and no one has been killed. None of the participants (hunters and huntees) have complained. Where do we draw the line? We draw the line in the sand in some place other than the Nevada desert. If Mr. Burdick and his stable of human targets want to extract ten grand from mentally unstable males with more money than brains, more power to them. Is this a great country or what? -- Send feedback to the author. The "What is the Deal?" column will appears weekly on the Pie of Knowledge website. Guest submissions are welcome and encouraged. To submit an article to "What is the Deal?" click here. To subscribe to the "What is the Deal?" mailing list and receive early notification when a new column is available, click here. The Pie of Knowledge will never, ever divulge email addresses to any third party for any reason unless so ordered by a court of law. Contributions to the Pie of Knowledge are greatly appreciated. 
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