New York – Alexandra Broseus grabs a shotgun, lifts it to her slender shoulder, pumps and readies her aim.
Seconds later she’s firing furiously at animated deer darting across a videogame screen inside a popular Manhattan hipster bar called Horseshoe.
When the shooting ends and the adrenaline wanes, Broseus – wearing a zebra-striped dress – brings the plastic barrel to her lips, blows the imaginary smoke into the air and reaches for a nearby can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Thanks to youthful urbanites such as Broseus, the coin-operated Big Buck Hunter Pro has evolved into the hottest-selling, biggest-moneymaking video game in bars and arcades across the country.
It’s surprisingly popular in liberal bastions with strict gun laws such as New York City, where the idea of shooting real animals repulses many residents.
“It’s very strange, and I’ve been doing games for about 24 years. There’s some kind of hipness to it,” said George Petro, president of Play Mechanix Inc., the Chicago-area company that designed the game.
While older versions of the game have always done fairly well in the Midwest and other deer-hunting regions, the newest line – Big Buck Hunter Pro – has caught fire everywhere, mainly because of changes in the design.
Petro said the game has been upgraded to a PC platform, giving the game more lifelike graphics. A second shotgun was added so two players could fire away simultaneously, raising the competitive stakes and bragging rights.
When the Pro version was released, “I was hooked,” said 25-year-old Sebastian Baumer of New York City, who has spent about $2,000 playing over the past year.
Baumer says he’s one of the most lethal shots on the East Side of Manhattan. “I’ve been beaten obviously – but on a consistent basis? No.”
Players score points for accuracy, distance and the animal’s weight. There are different hunting adventures in states such as Montana, Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming.
Players can stalk elk, antelope, bighorn sheep, moose and, of course, bucks.
Just like in real life, a head or neck shot instantly brings down the animal. Gut shots take two or three rounds. Slaying an innocent ewe or doe is forbidden.
Part of the allure: no shivering outside in the cold for hours waiting for a trophy buck to arrive.
“It’s distilled to the cool part, the shooting,” Petro said.
