You get offered a lot of drugs when you play Big Buck Hunter alone, shooting into the wee hours in the back of various Brooklyn dives. Molly. Coke. Something called cherry soap. “I’m just here to kill bucks,” I tell the dealers, pointing to the arcade game with its toy shotgun, virtual deer bounding across the screen. “Got any performance enhancers for this?”
Most walk away silently. One lingers, watching. “This is some addicting shit,” he says. “Be careful you don’t get hooked.” He laughs. I do too, but the next morning, after having cartoon wildebeests stampede through my dreams, I realize I’m addicted to Big Buck Hunter.
I play more that night, and the night after that, and the night after that. I have a goal: to secure one of 64 spots in the Big Buck Hunter World Championship.
The qualifying rounds last about a month, and in the end, despite a mad rush of latecomers and impossibly high scores, I finish 50th. I’m among the best players in the world. I am proud of this. It’s nice to be quantifiably good at something.
The championship is October 25 in Minneapolis. I’m freaking out. The best in the world will be there. More, I decide. I must practice more. More. More. At some point, the dealers start ignoring me. I’m just there to kill bucks.
Big Buck Hunter is an arcade hunting game with classic bar-game sensibility and a cult following. It owes its framework to Nintendo’s Duck Hunt and its generational resonance to first-person shooters like Doom and Halo. Its maker, Play Mechanix, has released several versions since the original came out in 2001; the latest is “Big Buck Hunter HD,” with, yes, high-definition graphics.
The goal is to shoot the male animals, which have antlers or horns, as they dart across the screen. Hit a female and the round ends. It’s potent mixture of fine motor skills, memorization, and animated violence. Playing passably is easy. Playing well is hard.
Big Buck Hunter machines tend to reside in the dark corners of arcades and bars. They are large and boxy, throwbacks to ’80s-era tech. More recent versions offer single-player and two-player options, giving the game a more social feel. Imaginary animal slaughter can be a bonding experience.
Originally a regional curiosity drawing on Midwestern hunting culture, Big Buck gained hipster cred through marketing savvy and irony-laced nostalgia. Then, in 2008, Play Mechanix and its parent company Raw Thrills launched an annual tournament. Beyond being crowned the preeminent hunter of fake deer, the champ takes home an oversized check---$15,000 in 2014. Not life-changing money, but still significant.
Big Buck Hunter is a subculture of strange earnestness and earnest strangeness. There are rivalries. There is sorrow and joy. Above all else, there is isolation. A game of patterns and of instinct, it preys on the mind the way any pure obsession does. Every shot brings potential glory. Every shot brings potential ruin. You can’t win, even when you do, because you could always have shot better.
It's the evening of Friday, October 24, 2014. I’m walking through the streets of Minneapolis to The Pourhouse, a three-story superpub hosting this year’s tournament. Tonight is the ladies-only tourney; the World Championship comes Saturday. Some time ago, some progressive soul within Big Buck Inc. figured that having so many dudes was bad for the game’s image. The winner of tonight’s contest will win $5,000, and five of the women here also will compete in the world championship. They are held in especially high regard, the subtext being it’s OK to lose to a girl if she’s one of those girls.
The bar, decorated in the Big Buck colors of green and orange and dotted with strobe lights, feels like a carnival. Or a rave. There’s a crowd, and it’s stoked. The emcee growls from the stage, announcing the slate. He sounds like a strip club DJ, especially when he draws out the syllables of women’s first names. "Please welcome... Juuuuuuu-leeeeeee-aaaaaaaa.”
Julia Willmott is a friend from New Jersey. We met at the NYC Big Buck Hunter League. She’s as skilled as she is competitive.
“I started playing Buck as a stress reducer at my first job,” Willmott says. She’s in her late 20s, and works in digital media for children’s television. “I got pretty good at it. So my friends started betting on me, against strangers.”
“So you were a hustler,” I say.
“No! Well, maybe,” she says. “I just liked playing, and guys always thought they could beat a silly little girl at a shooting game. But none of them could.”
Willmott graduated from the local circuit after checking out the 2012 championship. She was hooked. “I have a bit of an obsessive personality. I wanted to be on that stage, competing at that level.”
So she practiced. A lot. She qualified for the 2013 tournament, and placed 12th. She has no expectations for 2014, though winning at least one match in the double-elimination format “would be nice.”
Despite her prowess, Willmott's shot a real gun just once. “I didn’t like it,” she says. “Too many loud noises. And I don’t think there’s much crossover between real marksmanship and BBH marksmanship.”
Don’t try saying that to the guy at the bar, the one wearing a UFC tee, wraparound shades and a scraggly goatee. He’s pontificating at length about how he owes his Big Buck skills to his stint in the military in the ‘80s. Though this is contrary to my experience---my Army drill sergeants would’ve waterboarded me for firing an M4 like I fire toy shotguns---I keep quiet. It seems wiser.
The crowd here in the Pourhouse has grown steadily to more than 100. There’s a sense of playful tribalism, a gathering of clans. The Minnesota Marksmen have carved out their own corner of the bar. They’re eager to take the title back from the 'Sconnie Snipers, who live over the state line in Wisconsin. It won't be easy, though. The Snipers' big gun, last year’s champ Trevor Gartner, is favored to repeat.
My addiction started, as so many do, as a Saturday night impulse. It was late 2012, and two friends are sharing an apartment in Greenwich Village. The apartment is above a bar. The bar has Big Buck Hunter. It was just that easy.
We weren’t the only guys shooting there. We shared the machine with a middle-aged dude with a camo hat and a wad of dip nestled in his cheek. Every time we’d go in, he’d be there, sitting on a stool, slaying bucks and sipping light beer. Eventually he taught us the basics, impressing upon us the need to practice.
“It’s all patterns,” he’d say. “If you want to win, just know the patterns.”
Patterns are key. Bucks appear in specific places at specific times. Knowing the patterns requires practice. Practice requires time. Time requires money. But my friends and I are young. We can find time and money.
We train against one another, competing for a plastic wrestling title belt. I train harder, I train longer, I train more thoroughly. I start winning matches. Then I start winning all the matches. The plastic title belt stops leaving my apartment.
We learn that there’s a Big Buck Hunter team league starting in the East Village. We make bowling league references from The Big Lebowski, and joke about becoming our dads. Then we sign up.
The week before the 2014 World Championship, Andy Lin seems relaxed. Lin, a photographer in his mid-thirties, is an incredibly kind soul who thrives in competitive atmospheres by never losing his cool. He’s got long shiny hair and a taste for deep v-neck T-shirts. He’s a local legend known both for his poise and his skill with a plastic firearm. As far as anyone can recall, he’s the only guy to attend every championship since the inaugural 2008 contest. (He didn’t compete in 2011, due to a Hurricane Irene-related mishap during qualifying.) Though he’s an annual title threat, placing as high as fifth in 2010, he’s never bagged the grand prize.
“You never know what can happen at the tourney,” he says. “All depends on how the brackets align.”
We’re sitting in a corner of Ace Bar in the East Village, watching the quarterfinals of the NYC Buck Hunter League tourney. Although unaffiliated with the world championship, it draws some serious players. Elite players consider it a practice run for the big show.
Lin attributes his Big Buck skill to a photographer’s eye and his use of meditation and breathing exercises. He’s also a proficient Buck Hunter historian, rattling off names of former contenders and close matches the way others in this bar know their fantasy football teams.
“When the HD machines came out, a lot of old school people dropped out,” he says. “It wasn’t one thing---just a lot of little things that added up. The screen got wider, the guns were stiffer. Distance matters more now, that kind of stuff. I’m not an old man or anything, but between the changes and all the new faces in the community”---he means people like me, but is polite enough not to say it---“definitely makes me feel like a Buck Hunter veteran.”
Andy touches on the growing trend of players owning personal Big Buck machines. “You used to be a douchebag if you did that,” he says. “But then those people started winning championships. So.”
I mention the Big Buck Hunter Facebook group---not the official one, but the semi-secret, invite-only group where tips are shared and scores posted.
“There can be a lot of negativity and vitriol online, even in that Facebook group,” he says. “But look at the range of conversation, even debate, that happens there. It’s part of what makes Buck Hunter so special---the game spans many sectors of society. The stereotype is that most of the people who love BBH are Republican, pro-gun, NRA members. That’s true, but only to an extent."
They call him the Big Buck Ninja. It’s hard to ignore the racial component, given how white the scene is and the fact that Lin is of Asian descent. “I got that nickname by playing well,” he says. “It’s part of who I am. Or who I am when I play Buck.”
Though Lin is by far the best player in the city league, I have the best team. In a format where you’re only as strong as your weakest player, that’s everything.
We play his team in the semis. We barely get by, finally bringing it home on the last site. (A standard match involves three treks with five stages or "sites" each.) I later learn that both of his teammates are rookies, coached by the Lin himself. I ask if he has any last minute advice for the big show.
“Get the Dangerous Trophy,” he says, referring to the particularly nasty beast---usually a lion, or a bear, or a jaguar---that appears periodically. It’s a bitch to kill, and worth serious points. “They’re the ones you remember."
With that, the Big Buck Ninja is gone.
In Minneapolis, Julia Willmott rolls through her first-round match like Rambo at a picnic. In the past month, she’s trained specifically for the “shootout” format, in which players shoot simultaneously, competing for the same bucks and points. Some elite players prefer the more traditional single-player version, which shootout proponents compare to “boring-ass golf.” It’s the Lincoln-Douglas debate of the Big Buck world.
Momentum is everything in The Pourhouse. Rather than the standard three trek-format, the tourney features only one trek per match, with a bonus round offering negligible points. As a result, there’s little time for players to collect themselves after a bad round.
Willmott is onstage three minutes and leaves in a shower of high-fives and ‘attagirls. She’s happy knowing she’ll go home with at least one win. It’s almost enough to distract from the intimidating matchup she could be facing later tonight with defending women’s champ Melinda Van Hoomissen next.
“Someone has to play her,” Willmott says. “Maybe that means someone has to beat her.”
Van Hoomissen has been a force of nature since losing the finals in 2012. She won it all the next year and is the favorite to repeat. But it won’t be easy, even if she drew a bye in the first round.
Finally, it's time for Willmott to face off against the former champ. Willmott jumps to an early lead. Then a herd of prehistoric Irish elk appears. They’re new animals, unveiled here at the tourney. No one has seen them before. It throws Van Hoomissen. Willmott is faster and cleaner. With two rounds down and three remaining, she holds a slim lead.
The New Yorkers are shouting her name. Van Hoomissen can’t catch a break, and Willmott runs the board. She dutifully picks off the bucks. Then, the Dangerous Trophy round comes up. It’s a lion, the Panzer tank of trophy animals. The lion is one step ahead of every shot. Willmott wins the round, but misses the lion and the big points it promised.
In the next round, Van Hoomissen rallies as her husband, a world championship qualifier dressed in a suit, watches intently. Van Hoomissen easily wins the two remaining sites and the bonus round to take the match. The final score doesn’t reflect how close we'd been to an epic upset.
Willmott ends up in the “re-rack” elimination bracket, where she wins her third match, loses her fourth and ends up 15th overall. It doesn’t faze her. She smiles and heads for the open bar.
Meanwhile, Van Hoomissen sails on until colliding with Erlandson, the former champ . The two of them are on fire, trading kills evenly. Both have young children, and seem to know the boards as well as their kids’ faces. It all comes down to timing, to getting there a millisecond before the other.
The first two rounds are impossibly tight, then Erlandson begins pulling away in the third. Van Hoomissen presses, trying to catch up. It backfires when she clips a doe.
Van Hoomissen meets her again in the final, but the match lacks the drama of their first go-round. Erlandson takes her third title in four years. She smiles and poses with Play Mechanix execs and the Big Buck Girls.
It's championship Saturday and there’s a rumor swirling in Minneapolis. Someone videotaped a run of every animal on every site in the game, and is, depending on who’s telling the story, sharing or selling them. Considering the myriad combinations of animals and sites and patterns, that’s hundreds of videos. The time spent filming and splicing all that boggles the mind. It is insane, brilliant, and a measure of how much BBH courses through the veins of its apostles.
As I'm leaving my hotel on the way to the venue, I hear the Rocky theme coming from a nearby room. There’s no way to be certain another Big Buck Hunter competitor is responsible---but really who else would it be.
By the time I get to The Pourhouse, the atmosphere is much as I remember it from Friday. Same faces, same outfits, same rodeo energy. The emcee implores the crowd to drink Old Milwaukee, because it’s the sponsor and it’s free. A hype video introducing “Big Buck Hunter HD Wild” plays on a screen. It has lots of new animals.
Sixty-four competitors gather in a VIP lounge for a rules briefing. Some pace and pull their bottom lip. Others chatter incessantly. One guy counts to 10, skipping the number seven, over and over and over.
The briefing is mostly to remind everyone that any decisions by the “game wardens”---the contest officials---are final. And we’re told not to distract our opponents "by clapping, elbowing, or blowing in their ear” which means at some point, someone tried each of those things.
We go downstairs. Someone introduces reigning champ Trevor Gartner, who approaches the main stage with his ‘Sconnie Sniper entourage. Some of them hold his trophy and title belt aloft. The Minnesota Marksmen boo, but it’s all in fun. Gartner says some things. The emcee says some things. Then, finally, mercifully, it’s time to compete.
I lose my first match. Badly.
Part of it is bad luck. I draw 2011 champion Nick Robbins, a dead-eyed salt-and-pepper-haired Minnesotan, as my opponent. Part of it is nerves. And part of it is poor shooting. It seems like Robbins is half a beat ahead of me. He hits a doe on the fifth site, allowing me to put a few points on the board and walk offstage with something resembling dignity.
I shake my head grimly at the Brooklyn Tribe. Lin, ever optimistic, says it was smart to get my bad game out of the way early. It will be at least an hour until my next match, so I head to the bar.
I fare no better in the next round against Australian Brenton Garritty. It was tight for awhile, the kind of back-and-forth action that would’ve been fun writing about had I won. But after I slay the Dangerous Trophy---a lion---to even the match, Garritty shoots four deer to my two. With that, I’m out, after a grand total of five minutes on the main stage.
My boys from Brooklyn finish 12th, 16th, and 21st. Lin jumps out early with two dominant wins, then loses two matches in 10 minutes. He finishes 22nd.
“Anything can happen at the tourney,” he says, echoing what he’d told me the week before. He sounds sadder this time, though. He’s long known the game can be arbitrary, a matter of timing and luck.
It’s not like I want to shoot myself or anything. Besides, the guns are plastic.
The 12 best Big Buck hunters in the world are mostly Midwesterners. The Minnesotans exact their revenge on Wisconsin when Chris Fream bests reigning champ Trevor Gartner. Fream later falls to ace shooter Derek Tower of St. Louis.
Tower, wearing a stuffed lion hat for luck, plays the jester, laughing with the crowd and keeping things lose until he steps into the box. Then he becomes a killing machine, taking down every creature that crosses the screen. He cruises through the bracket until meeting Matthew Garver.
Garver, a Texan in an Indiana Jones getup, came out of nowhere to place second in 2013. He’s precise and methodical in contrast to Tower's speed.
After a tense semifinal, Garver pulls away in the final sites to take the match. He needs one more win to take the title---and the big novelty check.
But Tower isn’t making it easy. He cleaned up in the re-rack elimination bracket, and meets Garver in the finals.
The finals offer a three-trek format, a change that benefits Tower, who tends to be a faster shot. He pulls away early, blasting at bucks even as they materialize. He hits them all. It’s freakish, and unstoppable. He takes the match. Green and orange confetti falls from the rafters. Tower raises his arms in triumph.
I catch up with him a little later. He’s glowing with excitement and perhaps alcohol. “Only had four beers all day,” he says. I have trouble believing him. Then he says he’s the fastest Big Buck Hunter shot in the world. I have no trouble believing him. I ask if he’s got any advice.
“Aim small, hit small,” he says.
I have no idea what this means, but damned if it doesn't sound good.
***
As fun as Big Buck Hunter is, it’s an expensive hobby. I resolve to abstain for a month, just to prove I don’t have to play. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.
I avoid bars with Buck Hunter machines and spend more time at home. This pleases my wife, my dog, and my checking account.
I make it barely a week before the itch returns. My teammates are debating the color of our league T-shirts. It’s surprisingly contentious. “This is a stupid conversation,” I text, before suggesting black. We’re the defending champs, I argue. We’re the bad guys. People are gunning for us. Embrace it.
I’m outvoted. We settle on forest green.
It’s Monday night. My wife is getting ready for bed. I put on my boots. “Going to watch the football game?” she asks. I smile and kiss her goodnight. “Something like that."
