NEW YORK -- When the organizers of the Big Buck Hunter world championship approached me to emcee their event, I asked what would be my main responsibility?
Big Buck Hunter championship: Hunters and hipsters
Amy K. Nelson goes inside the championship for the popular bar game Big Buck Hunter.
“We want you to s***-talk the competitors,” I was told.
And essentially, that is how and where I signed. A bar game gone global, people all over the country and the world have refined their games to compete at the annual tournament. For its fifth annual, players from all over the country (and one dude from Austailia) came to New York City for a weekend to compete for $15,000 and title of world champion.
The tourney consists of a 64-player bracket, with all competitors needing to qualify. This is a bar game, and thus alcohol was a main theme of the weekend. But don’t let the free-flowing booze fool you; people take it seriously and want to win. Just ask Travis Pastrana and his Team Whiskey Throttle crew; competitors, multi-time X-games medal winners and Big Buck hunter fans.
My part was to ingrain myself with the players, learn as much of the history as possible and try not to get too inebriated that I couldn’t speak over a microphone anymore. Jury is still out on that one but I know this: Big Buck is harder than you think, its top players party harder than you’d expect, and I’d do it all over again next year.
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