

Over the years, I had occasion to shoot a few more times, including at a “Second Amendment Fundraiser” at a shooting range I covered as a reporter in Memphis. It was loud and exciting, and, looking back, surprising it was allowed at all. I remember lying on my belly in a prone position, pulling back the bolt, and inserting the bullet by shoving it up into the chamber with my pinky.

22 rifles at summer camp in the Adirondacks as a young teenager. I have very limited experience with guns, and almost none hunting.
#Deer hunter 5 tracking trophies guns update how to#
Maybe the solution isn’t just more conservatives willing to consider gun control, but also more liberals learning how to hunt. Hunting and gun culture have become synonymous with conservative politics, to the extent that the National Rifle Association, an organization once primarily devoted to hunting and shooting safety, has become a de facto wing of the Republican Party.īut perhaps the solution, or the beginning of the solution, to America’s gun problem will come not from further entrenchment into our positions, but more crossing over to the other side. But demographic shifts over the last half-century have made cities liberal bastions, and left rural areas deep red. Hunting doesn’t belong to conservatives anymore than hiking belongs to liberals. I even know a few-mostly fellow journalists in western states who every fall disappear into the woods in search for deer or elk. Of course, it’s possible to be a liberal hunter. In their eyes, I was just another liberal gun-grabber. I tried to convince them of the reasonableness of my positions-that I didn’t believe in banning guns, but that the use of guns should be regulated at least as stringently as cars. Not long after the Las Vegas shooting last October, I engaged with Second Amendment zealots on Twitter. When it comes to guns, I believe in both the need for stricter regulation of firearms, and in the right of Americans to own weapons for hunting and self-defense. My politics are my own, and I like to think they’re more nuanced than our two-party system allows. But at least part of the impulse stems from a frustration with America’s polarized political climate, and how uncomfortable I am with the orthodoxies and Shibboleths of our warring tribes. And if I’m honest, there’s also an element of mid-life crisis, an urge to shake up what about I know about myself and what others think of me. There were other factors behind my desire to start hunting-my eagerness to find a new outdoors challenge my desire to engage more physically with the world. He spent the morning educating me in the basics of shooting and deer stalking before we headed to his preferred hunting grounds. We met that morning in Hoboken-where many a great adventure begins-and drove to a surprisingly rural corner of northwest New Jersey. Beyond that, a tangle of trees and bramble disappeared into the New Jersey dusk.įisher, who’s also a Yale-trained stage actor and bartender, specializes in taking novices on their first deer hunt. In front of me lay a clearing, crossed with deer paths. My hunting guide, Fisher Neal, and I sat back-to-back, with the tree trunk between us, on precarious metal platforms Fisher had strapped to the tree months ago.

In the gloom of the late afternoon December light, a gray form emerged from a thicket near the tree where I perched, 20 feet off the ground. After nearly two hours of waiting, with freezing feet and a numb ass, I was going to do what I set out to do: kill a deer. “Deer! Deer!” I whispered through clenched teeth.įinally. Thick forests of towering trees will engulf the player in the virtual forest.I first saw it out of the corner of my eye. An improved 3-D engine provides amazing details, such as reflective water, fog coming from the mouths of the animals in cold weather, and light shining off the barrel of your gun. There are new animals to expand the challenge, such as elk, grizzly bear, black bear, and other new animals capable of turning the hunter into the hunted. Even when playing single player, computer-controlled "bot" hunters roam the woods, attracting and spooking the same deer that you're after. Players are not alone in the virtual woods. New features to Deer Hunter 5 include an expanded virtual season that allows you to manage your deer herd over the years, with realistic genetics and deer growth. Deer Hunter 5 builds on the successes of its predecessors, while pushing the limits of the hunting genre in new directions to create the most realistic deer hunting game ever made. Tracking Trophies is the latest in the best-selling hunting series.
