Can The Undead Bring New Life To The Uplands?

Is this the future of quail hunting?

Last month I had the chance to attend the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. I had never before been to either SHOT or Las Vegas because I am by nature a churlish type who prefers open sky and the company of dogs to such things. But the bosses said go, so I went. On the subject of Las Vegas, I have neither the talent nor imagination to describe it. Hunter S. Thompson published Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1972. He may as well have published it last week from the grave.

But SHOT show was an eye-opener for me. It’s billed as the largest hunting and shooting trade show in the world, and from my perspective it certainly lives up to that billing. The show draws an estimated 65,000 attendees, but numbers on a page are completely inadequate to describe how large it truly is. Only by holding your breath and physically diving into the seething mass of humanity undulating like sweaty waves across the show floor can you begin to appreciate the incredible size and scope of the hunting and shooting industry. I literally ran non-stop for three days, shoving women, children and seniors aside like ragdolls, and never came close to seeing it all.

That’s a good thing, I think, for the industry as a whole, but as a bird hunter and gundog guy, I was a bit disappointed at how little there was – at least in relation to everything else – for us. I know we’re out there, and I’d love to see us better represented, we just have to figure out a way to let manufacturers know that.

And I’ve got the perfect plan to do just that… Zombies. Yes, that’s right, I said zombies.

If you haven’t been paying attention to pop culture recently (and really, why would you?), you’d be surprised to discover that we have been invaded by the Undead. I’m not sure how or why our current fixation on all things zombie began, but what’s even more perplexing is how thoroughly (or ridiculously) the zombie craze has infiltrated the shooting and outdoor sports. Walking the aisles of the SHOT show this year, you might think you’d mistakenly wandered onto the set of a George A. Romero film. There were bleeding zombie targets, zombie-specific ammunition, zombie guns, zombie knives, zombie riflescopes, zombie machetes, zombie clothing, there was, in fact, so much zombie-themed gear on display that after a while I became completely desensitized to the stupidity and simply stopped noticing it. And that doesn’t even include all the zombies I saw while walking around the casino floors…

And then it hit me: maybe bird hunters are poorly-represented at SHOT not because we’re a shrinking demographic, but because we’re an unhip, zombie-less demographic. We’re really behind the curve here, undead-wise. We need to hop on this zeitgeist and ride the wave while we can because there’s a huge and untapped potential market.

Just a few ideas: Zombie-proof brush pants. Strap vests with enlarged zombie head-sized game bags. Short-barreled, high-capacity shotguns for bird hunting in zombie-infested areas. And of course you’d need to load them with special zombie duplex loads to eliminate the slow (and potentially life-threatening) annoyance of having to switch shells in the midst of an unexpected zombie attack.

And the zombie fad adds an entirely new and exciting dimension to dog training, too. It brings a whole new meaning to “hunt dead.” Do you train your dog to be steady to zombie charge and shot, or steady to zombie charge only? When chasing down cripples is it better for them to attack zombies from the front or bring them down from the rear? Is there potential for the creation of exciting new zombie-hunting breeds? Because let’s face it, setters and pointers may not be able to cut it in the post-Apocalyptic upland scene. Now I know there may some resistance to this idea. Some may even call it…stupid. Perhaps, but it’s a stupid world out there, and sometimes in order to survive you’ve got to let go, jump in and strive to be stupider than the next guy. Now if you’ll pardon me I’ve got to work on some introductory zombie throat-ripping drills with the pup…

Chad Love  writes for Quail Forever from Woodward, Oklahoma. He is a lifelong quail hunter and “bird dog guy” who also writes for Field & Stream, including the magazine’s  “Man’s Best Friend” gundog blog.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 and is filed under Dogs, Hunting, Quail. Both comments and pings are currently closed.