even conflict, depending on their point of view or their interest in the outcome. Even the testimony of actual participants differs, and the further you are from the events themselves, the greater the participants’ versions will diverge.
VERSION 1
In 1976, a 35-year-old guy named Hayes Noel went for a walk in the woods near Charlottesville, Virginia. The woods were on a farm that belonged to a buddy, because Hayes was from New York City.
Actually, Hayes may have been feeling a little bit insecure that day. He has said he was troubled by a philosophical question, but it may have been more personal than that. If the world went to hell in a hand-basket – as it showed every sign of doing in those days – was he tough enough, resourceful enough to survive?
Now, Hayes never went to Viet Nam. He was not a big-game hunter or a Harley rider. He was a New York City stockbroker! But wasn’t making a living on the New York Stock Exchange practically as heart-pounding as stalking a wounded Cape buffalo in the long grass of Zimbabwe? Competition is competition, right? Cut-throat is cut-throat. If beetle-browed cold warrior Leonid Brezhnev touched off the Soviet Union’s big nukes, and he wasn’t killed in the initial blast, Hayes wondered if he could do whatever he had to do to survive. He really was not sure, but who could be if the unthinkable happened?
Hayes had a lot of friends. He eventually brought up his survival insecurities with George Butler and Charles Gaines . Charles was a writer and outdoorsman who lived in New Hampshire. Inside Hayes’ circle, this survival debate grew with sides roughly forming around these two philosophical positions:
1. Country people would survive some kind of holocaust better than city people because people in the country grow up hunting, fishing and practicing skills that would help them adjust to a world that had suddenly turned hostile.
2. City people would cope better in emergency situations because they learn survival skills in places like the subway or even on the chaotic floor of the stock exchange – a rather intense example of cooperation and competition all mixed together – where country people, admittedly more attuned to nature’s pace, would go bonkers.
So, Hayes invented paintball.
No, of course it wasn’t quite that simple.
VERSION 2
While grilling king mackerel and drinking gin and tonics on the patio of a home on Jupiter Island, Florida, in 1977, Charles Gaines and Hayes Noel came up with the initial concepts of a survival game as a lark or just for fun. The practical problem was finding the right equipment and getting a place to give it a shot.
Their idea was to have a game that “might contain the childhood exhilaration of stalking and being stalked, might call on a hodgepodge of instincts and skills and might allow a variety of responses to this rich old question: ‘How do I get from where I am now to where I want to be?’” They figured that if they could come up with a format, the game would appeal to kids and adults alike.
Then, Butler ran across a paint marker in an agricultural catalog. Sold by Nelson Paint in Michigan, it was called the Nelspot Marker and it looked like an unwieldy pistol with a clear plastic tube projecting out the back end. That tube was filled with round balls of oil-based paint encapsulated for Nelson by R.P. Scherer Paint Company. The marker relied on a replaceable 12-gram CO2 cartridge in the handle for power, and the balls it shot were supposed to burst open when they hit. Farmers used the Nelspot to put spots on cows to designate those that, for instance, needed a vaccination. Timber cruisers used it in the woods or on construction sites to mark trees for cutting.
So, Butler and some of Hayes’ friends ordered markers. Eventually, they had more fun than they ever believed was possible just running around and hiding and shooting at each other. In those days, shooting paintballs was kind of a random act and nobody bothered too much about wearing any kind of safety gear.
Hayes remembers the first time anyone got hit with a paintball … because it was him! He had taken a wild shot at Charles Gaines, the New Hampshire outdoorsman, and when his buddy fired back, the ball hit Hayes squarely in the ass. It “raised a little welt,” he has recalled.
The original paintball game was conceived of as a survival game. The best man wins. It was played in the woods indolobore old clothesvel and some used camo. The markers were pump-action and the paint was real, oil-based goo that only came off with a liberal dose of turpentine.
Charles Gaines
Brass Eagle Blade 02 pump is a cool-looking, entry-level, polymer-frame marker. It is similar in power and capacity to the original single-shot pump markers used by the sport’s founders in the early ‘80s although its looks are truly stylin’.
These guys had so much fun they decided to have an organized contest. Maybe it was because Hayes was almost 40 years old that he felt he had to have a reason to have this kind of fun, running around and shooting at other guys like a kid at a pool with a water pistol. He was getting old. So, they mapped out a field and made up rules and got a lot of their other friends – almost all older guys, but from all over the country – to come and play.
The first organized game of paintball was held on Saturday, June 27, 1981, near Henniker, New Hampshire. Hayes and friends like Bob Gurnsey (who is still very much involved in paintball) used an 80-acre woodlot – which, after the day was over, they realized was way too big for just a dozen players – and placed flags at about the mid-point of the sides of the field. Each side of the field was represented by a different flag color. Hayes gave every player a rough map. The goal of this first game of “capture the flag” was to collect one of each color flag without getting hit by a paintball.
Debra Dion Krischke has been in paintball almost since Day 1. Today, she operates the popular International Amateur Open tournament and industry trade show held north of Pittsburgh each year.
Here were the pioneers: Charles Gaines (writer), Hayes Noel (stock and options trader), Bob Gurnsey (sports products), Bob Jones (writer), Ronnie Simkins (farmer), Jerome Gary (film producer), Carl Sandquist (contracting estimator), Ritchie White (forester), Ken Barrett (venture capitalist), Joe Drinon (stockbroker), Bob Carlson (trauma surgeon) and Lionel Atwill (writer and author of the first “official” book about paintball).
So, who won the game … and how did it affect everyone’s notions about who would survive?
The forester, Ritchie White, won the first game, which went on for several hours. Ritchie, who was a hunter and “lumber man,” captured one flag of every color and was never shot, not even once. What is more interesting is that he never shot at anyone either!
For that first game, everyone was on their own. There were no teams. Consequently, each player used a different strategy. Some – those men eliminated quickly as it turns out – were aggressive and ran dodging and shooting after every flag. Hayes made up his mind to walk the perimeter and then go straight in toward the flags when he found them. He avoided firefights but was eventually eliminated when
