I'm actually one of the women thinking about signing up for this but I hear it really hurts when you get hit. And there's a big difference between $2500 and $1000. Right now I'm working in a strip club, but it wouldn't be much different. I would do it for the money but the issue for me is how good their insurance is, they don't allow protective gear. Here's a news article I read on the net: (July 10) -- It's a new form of adult entertainment, and men are paying thousands of dollars to shoot naked women with paint ball guns. They're coming to Las Vegas to do it. This bizarre new sport has captured the attention of people around the world, but Channel 8 Eyewitness News reporter LuAnne Sorrell is the only person who has interviewed the game's founder. George Evanthes has never been hunting. "Originally I'm from New York. What am I going to hunt? Squirrels? Someone's cats? Someone's dogs? I don't think so," said Evanthes. Now that he's living in Las Vegas, he's finally getting his chance to put on his camouflage, grab a rifle and pull the trigger. But what's in his scope may surprise you. He's not hunting ducks or deer, he's hunting naked woman. "I've done this three times," says Nicole, one of the three women allowing themselves to be shot at. Two other women, Gidget and Skyler, claim they have done this seven times. Hunting for Bambi is the brainchild of Michael Burdick. Men pay anywhere from $5000 to $10,000 for the chance to come to the middle of the desert to shoot what they call "Bambis" with a paint ball gun. Burdick says men have come from as far away as Germany. The men get a video tape of their hunt to take home and show their friends. Burdick says safety is a concern, but the women are not allowed to wear protective gear -- only tennis shoes. Burdick says hunters are told not to shoot the women above the chest, but he admits not all hunters follow the rules. "The main goal is to be as true to nature as possible. I don't go deer hunting and see a deer with a football helmet on so I don't want to see one on my girl either," said Burdick. The paint balls that come out of the guns travel at about 200 miles-per-hour. Getting hit with one stings with clothes on, and when they hit bare flesh, they are powerful enough to draw blood. Evanthes shot one of the women and says, "I got the one with the biggest rack." Gidget is the one who took the paint ball shot to the rear. She says, "It hurt. It really hurt. I didn't think it was going to be that bad." When asked if she cried she says,"yeah, a little bit." So why do women agree to strip down and run around the desert dodging paint balls? Nicole says it's good money. "I mean it's $2,500 if you don't get hit. You try desperately not to and it's $1000 if you do," said Nicole. The men and women say this is all good, clean fun, but in Part 2 of this special report, reporter LuAnne Sorrell speaks with a psychologist who says for some men playing out this sexual aggression may lead to other more violent acts against women. Michael Burdick, the founder of Hunting For Bambi, explains the game to three women early one Monday morning. "You have to collect four flags throughout the course. Some are easy for you and some are not easy," said Burdick. The woman begin stripping down to their tennis shoes and start running to dodge the paint balls that go buzzing by. "We got a hit," said George Evanthes, who just shot and hit one of the women in the behind. "It was sexy. Let's put it that way," said Evanthes. The women who take part in this bizarre game get paid $2,500 if they escape unscathed. Even if a paintball hits them, they walk away with $1,000. "As you can see this is not lethal, and it wasn't meant to hurt anybody. Just good clean fun," said Evanthes. Burdick says the majority of the men who pay the $5000 to $10,000 to play the game are the submissive, quite type. "For the individual who's used to saying 'I can't go out with the boys tonight' or the wimp of America, it's a chance for him to come out and vent his aggression and really take charge and have some fun." Marv Glovinsky is a clinical psychologist. He says Hunting for Bambi is every man's fantasy come true. "You might think of all men as little boys who have never grown up, so they entertain their adolescent fantasies and they go through life being adolescents on the hunt." But Glovinsky says this so called game that mixes violence with sexuality can be dangerous for men who can not distinguish fantasy from reality, and acting out the violence in this game could lead to them acting out real violence. "If you're blurring reality and fantasy and you can't make the distinction and you're emotions over power your intellect or your higher mental function, your going to get into trouble, and if you have a control problem to boot, that's really going to cause problems." Problems, he adds, like beating, raping or even hunting women with a real gun. Hunter Evanthes disagrees, "This is just a game. Get serious, get real." But some worry it's a game, which may have consequences that go far beyond the playing field.

Bambi don't get your hopes up yet. Here's what one urban legends site has to say. Claim: A Las Vegas business offers men the opportunity to "hunt" naked women with paintball guns. Status: Undetermined. 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, their business is: More shocking than anything you've ever seen before. Labeled by CBS News as a cross between Sex and Violence a deadly combination! Women are being hunted down like animals and shot with paintball guns. This Raw and completely Uncensored video is a cross between Bum Fights and Girls Gone Wild and is sure to be the topic of many Howard Stern Show fans. You will be completely stunned when you see some of the wildest, most outrageous moments ever caught on tape. This is without a doubt one of the sickest and most shocking videos ever made. When it comes to hunting women if you can think of it we probably show it. Women are screaming with fear as our Team Bambi hunters track them down and blast them with paintball guns . . . Contributing to the public's belief in this venture was a local Las Vegas television station, KLAS-TV, running a non-probing news feature on Hunting for Bambi (complete with footage of "hunters" in action) and proclaiming it to be real. However, the whole setup of the Hunting for Bambi site seems to be a deliberate attempt to shock and outrage rather than amuse, and it's all too easy for hoaxsters to fool reporters with shows staged for their benefit (as notorious prankster Joey Skaggs has demonstrated time and again). 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 MPH 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. (Indeed, 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. Its putative parent company, Real Men Outdoor Productions, is indeed a registered Nevada corporation, but that in itself doesn't mean much, as anyone can register a business for a small fee. (The address listed for Real Men Outdoor Productions corresponds to the address of another registered Las Vegas company, Clean Your Carpets Inc., whose corporate status has since been revoked.) Perhaps more significant is that 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. We're still investigating, but we'd be quite surprised if this turned out to be anything but yet another outrageous leg-pull. Last updated: 15 July 2003 The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/bambi.asp Click here to e-mail this page to a friend