Could Indoor Hunting Be Coming To A Wal-Mart Near You?

I was leaving Schnuck's the other evening and noticed the current TipOff magazine in the publication rack outside. The headline on the cover promoted that it was the "Hunting Outdoor Issue."

Which, of course, made me wonder when the Hunting Indoor Issue would be coming out.

I've never been much of a hunter. I wacked a bunny or two growing up with a BB gun, but haven't done much shooting since then except for the occasional pigeon that dared to land on my roof.

I guess if I was a hunter, I would consider myself a fair-weather hunter. If the weather is 70 and sunny and it's sometime after noon, I might consider hunting. But most "hunting seasons" always seem to occur when the weather sucks and you have to get up at 4 in the morning in order to get to your tree stand or hunting blind. That doesn't sound like fun to me.

But I think I could get into Hunting Indoors.

The weather would always be perfect. And if it did happen to be a little hot or little cool, you could just adjust the thermostat. No rain. No snow. I bet everybody would be Hunting Indoors.

Locally, Lowes and Wal-Mart would both be great indoor hunting arenas. First of all, they're both big buildings. You gotta have space to accommodate all the people who will want to be hunting indoors.

A building like KFC just wouldn't cut it, although that might be a good place to hunt chickens. Free range chickens, of course.

And the buildings have to have tall ceilings, which Lowes and Wal-Mart definitely do. You're average tree stand would not fit in a Kohl's.

And a big plus for both Lowes and Wal-Mart is the fact that they already have a small contingent of wildlife living in their stores. Sure, they're just wayward songbirds, but it's a start. After all, prey is prey no matter the size.

Wal-Mart does have one advantage over Lowes as an indoor hunting arena. If you happen to forget your gun at home, at Wal-Mart you can just head to sporting goods. They'll set you up.

So all Lowes and Wal-Mart need to do is introduce a little more wildlife to their stores and we'll be ready to go hunting. I was thinking we could start small with a few deer, some turkeys and geese, a family of squirrels and at least one bear, you know, to make things interesting.

Then, the Hunting Indoors season could begin.

My plan is almost perfect except for one small thing. As Hunting Indoors takes off - as I'm sure it will - there are bound to be a lot of wayward bullets that will poke holes in the roofs of Lowes and Wal-Mart. That will let rain in and the heating and air conditioning out. Kind of defeats the whole purpose behind indoor hunting.

To help minimize the roof damage we may need to restrict some guns. No big caliber rifles. No magnums. No Uzis. Nothing bigger than a 22.

And, of course, BB guns would be OK.

I wonder if you can wack a bear with one of those?