New Jersey Man Hunts Dream

Last fall, avid deer hunter Karl Zainitzer walked away from the $5 million landscaping business he founded, waved goodbye to its 132 employees and began full-time his pursuit of the ultimate deer.

Since then, he has built his Central Jersey production company, Xtreme Outdoors, into a national brand by releasing two successful deer hunting DVDs. His latest work, released in July, features a legion of hunters scouting for deer in seven states.

And now Zainitzer, a 37-year-old father of two, is the Northeast's representative on a national hunting tour that pits eight professional hunters against each other to see who can nab the biggest buck for thousands of dollars in prize money.

"I just felt a lot of the videos and TV shows on the networks didn't represent the Northeast at all," said Zainitzer this week from his Lambertville home. "I was born and raised in New Jersey, I've hunted in the Northeast my entire life ... so to represent the Northeast is great in that sense."

Zainitzer recently was signed to the newly founded World Hunting Association tour, created in June by former Michigan real estate executive and lifelong hunter David Farbman.

"Karl redefines really what being a calculated, meticulous hunter is," Farbman, 35, said in a telephone interview. Farbman is unabashedly pushing the World Hunting tour as an extreme competition unlike anything the hunting world has seen. Farbman's company and production crews for each hunter will travel to various states and into Canada as they attempt to capture on video each leg of the tour, which began in August and will extend well into next year. Each hunter competes using a rifle, muzzleloader and bow.

The edited footage will then be streamed over the group's Web site, worldhunt.com, which went live a week ago. Farbman also hopes to air tour episodes on cable television early next year.

Farbman said he created the tour and the World Hunting site to tap into hunting's young demographic, which he said has been steadily declining. The way to rekindle the hunting spirit among young people, Farbman said, is to mesh competition with the overwhelming popularity of Internet sites like YouTube.com and reality television.

For Zainitzer, the tour came at a perfect time.

"The WHA opportunity for me is huge. With Xtreme Outdoors, I'm just paying the bills, I'm not pulling a salary," he said. "The WHA financially, monetarily, gives me the opportunity to hunt for a living."

The tour, however, has its critics. Hunting traditionalists have launched Internet campaigns and virtual petitions to denounce the tour. They argue the tour's cutting edge image -- photo galleries of WHA girls are featured on the site, for example -- and its heavy emphasis on sponsorship betray the true nature of hunting.

Not so, Farbman said.

"I think that what's cool about hunting is that going professional and making money hunting, unlike other sports, the spiritual connection and passion that a hunter has to the woods is second to none," he said.

For Zainitzer, who started hunting at age 8, what's extreme about hunting is the preparation and effort that goes into it. Zainitzer said a typical hunting day involves getting up at 4:30 a.m. to take a scent-free shower and dress in a carbon suit before driving to a property and scanning for deer until close to noon. Then there's dropping food plots, setting up digital cameras and keeping constant track of the wind.

Add to that a cameraman, and the challenge of finding a deer doubles, Zainitzer said.

"I've always had a fascination with whitetail deer," he said. "When I look at a whitetail, there's no rack that's the same. Plus, I'm an individual that doesn't like to be a jack of all trades. I want to be the best whitetail bow hunter I can be."