There is a sufficient supply of T-shirts, ammunition and rockets to entertain a few dozen wannabe drone hunters for most of the day, but the only official shooters are Steel and Bob Copley, who owns the land we're on and doesn't use earplugs because he's mostly deaf. The "drone hunt" is a publicity stunt for a proposal that hardly needs any additional PR: Media around the world have covered Steel's plan to allow the people of Deer Trail to defend its airspace by issuing licenses to shoot down drones. Besides Steel and Copley, the rest of us are reporters and photographers. Most of us journalists take a turn trying to blast rockets — stand-ins for the drones our licenses allow us to defend against — out of the cornflower sky with varying degrees of success.

The rockets are launched on a plume of white corkscrewing smoke with a push-button remote control. At about 800 feet, there is a low pop as the rocket separates and releases an orange streamer as it flutters back to earth, the shooters on the ground blasting away. The TV people who showed up later reported on that evening's newscast that the rockets were "designed to fly erratically to simulate drone activity," whatever that means, but the exercise was hardly that well thought out. We were just a bunch of grown men firing shotguns at toy rockets meant to be used by Cub Scouts, the sort of aimless fun that bored people invent to pass the time out here on the high plains.

There is a sufficient supply of T-shirts, ammunition and rockets to entertain a few dozen wannabe drone hunters for most of the day, but the only official shooters are Phil and Bob Copley, who owns the land we're on and doesn't use earplugs because he’s mostly deaf. The "drone hunt" is a publicity stunt for a proposal that hardly needs any additional PR: Media around the world have covered Phil's plan to allow the people of Deer Trail to defend its airspace by issuing licenses to shoot down drones. Besides Phil and Bob, the rest of us are reporters and photographers, and very few of us at that. Most of us journalists take a turn trying to blast rockets — stand-ins for the drones our licenses allow us to defend against — out of the cornflower sky with varying degrees of success.

There is a sufficient supply of T-shirts, ammunition and rockets to entertain a few dozen wannabe drone hunters for most of the day, but the only official shooters are Phil and Bob Copley, who owns the land we're on and doesn't use earplugs because he’s mostly deaf. The "drone hunt" is a publicity stunt for a proposal that hardly needs any additional PR: Media around the world have covered Phil's plan to allow the people of Deer Trail to defend its airspace by issuing licenses to shoot down drones. Besides Phil and Bob, the rest of us are reporters and photographers, and very few of us at that. Most of us journalists take a turn trying to blast rockets — stand-ins for the drones our licenses allow us to defend against — out of the cornflower sky with varying degrees of success.

There is a sufficient supply of T-shirts, ammunition and rockets to entertain a few dozen wannabe drone hunters for most of the day, but the only official shooters are Phil and Bob Copley, who owns the land we're on and doesn't use earplugs because he’s mostly deaf. The "drone hunt" is a publicity stunt for a proposal that hardly needs any additional PR: Media around the world have covered Phil's plan to allow the people of Deer Trail to defend its airspace by issuing licenses to shoot down drones. Besides Phil and Bob, the rest of us are reporters and photographers, and very few of us at that. Most of us journalists take a turn trying to blast rockets — stand-ins for the drones our licenses allow us to defend against — out of the cornflower sky with varying degrees of success.