You have some of the facts confused, but this is absolutely true.

The actual issue doesn't have anything to do with "extreme sport", but rather paintball guns have become center stage in a novel idea worked out by Doktari, Harry Selby and Steve Hornady.

It seems that so many tourist hunters were having difficulty getting good hits on elephant that a scheme was devised to address this problem. African game guards in Zimbabwe and Zambia are now issued paint ball guns and these tools are used to apply a mark of paint precisely where a bullet needs to go in order to effect an immediate kill. Hunters now no longer need to learn the intricacies of animal anatomy, but simply need to put the bead on the dot and break the trigger.

The scheme has been so successful that there is now talk of expanding the practice to a number of valuable plains game species including sable, lechwe and greater kudu. Several safari operators in Namibia are investigating the possibility of "targeting" gemsbok.

I see this practice as having great potential for North America also, where top dollar could be obtained for trophy deer in Texas. Such deer could be harmlessly "shot" first by those who view hunting as personally distasteful but who demonstrate extreme skill at paintballing and enjoy the thrill of being in close proximity to wildlife. Then the trophy deer could be harvested by those who have a strong affinity for vension and pinot noir.