http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I7VD7SlgEg
Don’t let his smiling face and enthusiastic sounding voice fool you — this ain’t exactly a glowing endorsement of the TrackingPoint rifle from the famed comedian. He keeps harping on the fact that this gun was designed to make hunting easier, playing to a New York City audience whose only interaction with their food is the white packages and sterile containers in the grocery store. And the audience eats it up (heh). Obviously, in their minds anything that makes killing defenseless animals easier is evil, and Colbert keeps playing off that bias. Then again, there are probably a number of hunters that would agree with him. I can think of a couple odd ones that strip naked, paint their bodies and go hunt pigs with spears because, as they say, even bows and arrows are “cheating.”
When these people hop into a paddock with a machete and come up with their own cheeseburgers, they can go ahead and feel free to lip up.
They should give these Tracking weapons to NY City , and Los Angeles, Police then they would not have to shoot up so much ammo & Miss the targets, (Empire State bldg, LA, Pickup, 10 rounds & NO Kill)
Man’s got a point.
I guess I have a romantic notion of hunting, but shouldn’t there be at least a little bit of skill involved?
I agree. Is there much skill involved in tagging a deer 1000 plus yards away and having the rifle do the rest? There are definitely tactical applications, but not very sporting as a hunter.
I’m in the camp where long range shots on game should be apologized for and not boasted about.
If you look at the ballistics of a .308, at 1000 yards there isn’t much Kinetic Energy left, and certainly not enough for a clean and humane cull.
Most standard hunting projectiles are designed to work within very specific velocity ranges and they usually don’t perform very well when under the minimum velocity. This limits the realistic performance to about 400 yards/metres most of the time.
Most of the game I’ve taken (feral pigs and goats) have been at ranges so close that low power optics, and even iron-sights, were not a handicap. And the bayonet wasn’t only there for show.
I really couldn’t care less. I also raise domesticated animals for food, and I certainly don’t concern myself with giving them a fighting chance at the slaughterhouse. If game animals were as cooperative, I probably wouldn’t bother shooting them at all.
True that.
Yes, but there’s no sport involved either (right?). The whole point of modern hunting, as I understand it, is sport and challenge that results in food. I think that was Accur’s point, though I’m no hunter, so I don’t know for sure.
Not for me. I’ve got no problem with people who get all worked up over the challenge and the thrill of the hunt, and I have no problem complying with hunting regulations built on the whole “fair chase” doctrine, but as for me I’m just harvesting cheap meat.
more deer are killed in Maryland by autos than bow hunters in suburban counties. several people are killed each year due to the rats with antlers. They destroy the habitat for other animals and we are grossly ovverun with them. I have, no $hit, 20 in my backyard. Please, come here and kill all you want, in any way you want. If you don’t want to eat them I know some food banks that happily accept meat and don’t get enough. If you do want to eat them, i recommend a rub of about 1/3 brown sugar, 2/3 of you favorite steak rub (mine is 1/3 Cavendars and 1/3 something called “roadkill grill”). Sear to about 145degrees. damn those are tasty rats. there is something to be said for free-range browser fed all organic no hormone meat. and its leaner than chicken.
Hell I’ll take the meat. I don’t shoot them, but I’ll sure as hell eat them. I love venison.
As a massive fan of his, it sucks to hear him speak against the 2A, however, Stephen Colbert on TV is a republican, but the actual SC is a democrat sadly, so I guess its no real shock that it slips through at some points. At least he pointed out it was $20,000.
… it’s called satire. (hint, the entire show is mocking conservatives)
…and sometimes they deserve to be mocked. Or, at least the politicians we call conservatives do. See directly below for details.
His sister ran as a Dem for Congressional District 1 in SC recently, and lost. The margin of loss disturbs me. I honestly thought this area was more red than the tally indicated.
Her opponent was caught traipsing off to Argentina to screw his Latina mistress. I’m appalled Sanford won after that stupidity regardless of whom he was running against.
If you ever met Jenny Sanford, you’d understand why. Classic example of a dead relationship. The fact he used state funds for the trips, that is what pisses me off.
He DID use state funds. Wasn’t sure of that. Then he’s not just stupid, he’s a crook. How did he not get charged?
C’mon, having Tracking Point advertise the ability to post your stuff on social media in their ad video is just asking for this sort of grief.
Plus, I’m with Swarf – If you tell me you bagged a buck, I’m impressed. Tell me you bagged one with a tracking point, and my response is, “so what”?
Yeah… But it is a great way to prove that all your shots were on legal animals and not protected species.
I’m fine with Colbert making fun of the rifle. Its a tacticool toy that you don’t need to take hunting. A $100 M91/30 with iron sights works for hunting. A $300 Thompson Center muzzleloader with or without a scope works. There’s a line between a quality gun and an exercise in throwing money around.
I’ll be happy when this whole TrackingPoint stunt goes down in flames so we never have to hear about it again and can talk about guns people actually use/purchase.
the rifle kinda deserves to be mocked, at least as much as i would be if i showed up on a hunting trip with this rifle. Or his sister.
I think it’s a great rifle for a SWAT team or the military, but I’d never use it to hunt anything. You’d have to be a pitiful hunter to use this against any game.
why would/should a SWAT team need this?
i am skeptical about the military application. shoots great, perhaps. but the average soldier is not tough enough to be a sniper, in my opinion. putting a fancy rifle in their hand wont change that. plus, what if the gadgetry fails in battle in the muddle of nowhere. now you have an overpriced club?
There are a lot of different applications for snipers in the military, certain applications are a lot tougher than others. In my experience the average combat arms soldier who scores well on marksmanship can fill a designated marksman role.
This scope just makes it easier and could take missing out of the equation. Should it fail I would imagine it comes with a mil dot or similar reticle for good old fashion manual adjustments.
This would make sense for the average sentry, would be a good force multiplier to help prevent getting overrun. Outside the wire way too much can go wrong with it to make it not worth carrying that brick around
Might as well hunt with a laser-guided drone-mounted weapon.
Do you need a special license to do that or is it covered by the standard big game one?
Gotta get the drone tags.
That was funny. I’m all for owning anything you want for self defense, but hunting is supposed to be a sport. If you hunt with a tracking point, you’re not really hunting.
I’m not so sure it is a sport – it seems more like a way to feed you and your family. well, maybe it is a sport, but we humans keep finding ways of tipping the scales in our favor – is that cheating? Guess it all depends on how you define sport. Maybe for it to be sport, it should be something people would want to take bets on – that is to say, something with a fair amount of uncertainty
Currently, the uncertainty seems to lie in the difficulty of locating the animals and stalking it within a few hundred yards. What with modern scopes and ammo, once the locating is completed it’s a pretty safe bet as to the outcome. In a similar manner, I suppose panning for gold, hunting for truffles, and birdwatching are also sports. Sometimes you hear people talk about how shooting pigs from a tree stand at feeding stations is unsporting. That’s due to the lack of uncertainty. But reintroduce danger and uncertainty by putting the hunter on the ground with a spear, and presto! It’s a sport again!
Sport or not, the kind of hunting that’s going to be done with a $20K TrackingPoint rifle has nothing to do with putting food on the table. This thing is about making it easier for filthy rich guys to get “trophies” without putting in the hard work of developing any skills.
Damn straight.
There are still a few (million?) of us who still enjoy the challenge. I still bow hunt if I draw a tag on the east side, use my iron sighted bolt gun if its on the west side.
This is how I see it.
I tought so too, but then I reflected on it a bit more and being extremely near sighted myself, I could see this be used by people with physical disabilities. I’d bet this could make it possible for someone like me or with arthritis to hunt and I see nothing wrong with that.
I’m under the impression that anti 2A types would prolly
consider spears cheating, as well.
Anti hunters, especially would consider ‘fair’ to be walking into the woods
naked in search of game to be fair. despicable, but fair.
pick up a stick, or rock, they would think you were back into unfair territory.
We are long-distance runners by nature, before any hunting tools were used we would chase animals until they literally died of exhaustion on the African plains. That method clashes with the “progress”, as they put it, we’ve made over the centuries. Why deal with the heat of the outdoors when you can sit in the air conditioning? But hunting technologies to make sure your rounds don’t go somewhere they shouldn’t, which could be dangerous, is a no-no. Double standards abound.
I prefer to hunt by driving herds off a cliff. No weapons. Just me, a loin cloth, and a cliff (which I dug by hand).
Thank you for this comment.
Im cool with my 300 dollar art scope on my m1a, which I have been slowly making into an m21. When the tracking point drops to say 300 dollars I’ll buy one.
It is also funny to hear the hypocrisy of those laughing, (guarantee not all of them are vegans). It is as if they don’t realize in order to eat, something has to die. Besides that most methods of hunting are a much less cruel way to kill the animal. So unless you’re a vegan and you brake for squirrels STFU and FOAD, rant over.
I still find Steven entertaining though.
Tracking Point was BEGGING for such treatment.
Think you got your sphincter in a little tight bunch over nada, Foghorn…
Yeah, I agree. That TrackingPoint video is prime material for mockery. A rifle with a wifi server? Posting your kills to Twitter?
The base concept is a marvel of engineering, but integrating the “social media” bullshit is beyond ridiculous.
Agreed.
Someone can correct me if Im wrong, but the original intention of the Tracking point system was military application right? Hunting of a different sort I s’pose.
Hearing people boo when the deer is shot.
Priceless.
I think it was more of an “Aww.”
I would think these folks should support anything that makes it easier for people to eat local, organic, free-range, grass-fed meat taken in a sustainable way without big agriculture being involved. In fact I think NYC hipsters/foodies should look hard at hunting as the epitome of their professed values.
You would think that, but the real world terrifies most of those people. They block the thought that something has to die in order for them to live in their mind, and instead think of the easier things in life. Like getting new shoes and where to get there next high. They generate the Utopian idea that killing is not necessary and fail to grasp reality.
Sean, not quite. Some of the “organic” crowd have become accepting of big game – e.g. venison especially is sort of a hipster meat now that is sought after by foodies and chefs. I would’ve laughed before I heard an episode of Splendid Table on NPR (yeah, yeah) where the entire episode was basically “cooking with hunted meat”, and the typical smooth-voiced liberal-sounding NY chef was proclaiming her lust for venison on the air and describing her struggling efforts to get it in NYC. There was a similar article in the Seattle Times food section earlier in the year. A lot of hunters in the PNW are surprisingly liberal.
The Pacific Northwest in general is pretty left leaning but from my observations they manage to do it with fewer flagrant rights violations than California. Oregon is certainly cleaner, safer, and more generally pleasant (Portland notwithstanding).
I chuckled at “hipster meat”. Wait’ll I get them hooked on coyote; I’ll be a millionaire.
Don’t forget nutria!
Wasn’t there a bounty on nutria? That would be a bonus. Sell the meat to the hipsters and get a bounty to boot.
Tastes like pork and pretense.
Hipster meat…you have to marinate that in PBR to get the thrift shop smell out, but is has a taste you probably aren’t famiar with.
Colbert still has his knickers in a twist because his sister got waxed by Mark Sanford in her campaign for Congress.
Hey, Stevie — FOAD. If that beyotch can’t beat a guy who got caught with his pants down, I’m guessing she’s all done.
She had the port union vote. Very vocal, and got her votes. There was no way she would have won, her lack of experience sealed that deal. The only one that could have beat Sanford was Sanford.
Which is a sad reflection of the state of South Carolinian politics.
That a union for a state run industry, in a right to work state has so much political pull…yes, very disturbing.
his sister got waxed by Mark Sanford
Full body or Brazilian?
Argentinian.
Ohhhh, rimshot!
Never be able to think it again without hearing it in Tony Soprano’s voice.
Hmmmm, stripping naked and painting your body is a bad thing? Guess I have to find something new to do on the weekend.
That Starbucks crack was pretty good 😉
As soon as I heard about the tracking technology I wondered how long it would be before it would make it on the Daily Show or Colbert Report. Don’t take it too seriously guys, for both of those shows the writers come up with the most obvious jokes that often times can’t be any more ridiculous and untrue, although the majority of content seems to be clear examples of simple hypocrisy these days. Writers are lazy.
The technology does have promise for applications like feral boar hunting, though. When you come upon an entire litter with an angry mama you’ll want all the rounds to hit the targets, you might just need them all if you’re not in a helicopter.
They need to stop calling this a precision guided weapon. There is no guiding going on. It is a fancy range finder. It will not guarantee a hit at 1000 yards, it may make it much more likely that is all. Lots of variable it does not account for. If you could tag something and just fire the gun into the air and the rounds still hit its target then it would be precision guided.
It’s not my place to tell you what kind of gun or optics you should buy, or what kind of joy you’re supposed to experience when putting dinner on the table.
As long as we maintain our renewable resources, go chase your happy and let me chase mine.
There is no “Cheating” in hunting, it’s about killing animals in a humane way to gather meat or to eliminate pest animals (hogs).
Honestly if you could chloroform a deer from 100 yards and then slice it’s throat, thats fine with me
Colbert and the rest would be perfectly fine with The Authorities having this tech because they think they are all on the same side.
And they might be, for now.
Colbert is funny and this technology is funny. TrackingPoint plays right into the stereotype that says the we like guns principally for killing, and that the “skill” or “sport” of shooting is just a smoke screen to hide that fact.
Watched it last night, found it pretty funny, as most of his stuff is.
That was hilarious.
“Famed comedian?” The man has never said anything remotely funny.
These are not going to be available to citizens anyway so who cares? Many surprises happening in early 2014.
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