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It’s spring time and for many, that means its time to put away the jackets and snow shovels and bring out the grills and sunglasses. But for Josh Heuer it’s also time to bring out the m14 air soft assault rifle, call some friends who want to have some fun with guns in the woods, and shoot each other. 

Air soft is a gun based game that uses small round plastic bee bee’s fired out of a weapon that is usually based off of a real gun. The bee bees hit hard and leave red welts on the skin but, are virtually harmless compared to their led counterparts.

Josh first started air soft two years ago when he and some friends bough some small spring fed pistols that did little more then hit someone from ten feet away. Falling in love with the game, he saved his money and bought an electric automatic rifle that could hit someone from half a football field away at over 350 feet per second. After buying the gun, ammo and other gear, it can cost a person over 300 dollars. But Josh and the people who frequently join him in this game say it was well worth it. Roughly Once a week, Josh and other players get together, pick teams take arms and shoot at each other until the last man is standing.  

Air soft gets its small popularity from the look and feel of using realistic weapons that don’t seriously hurt people. Josh describes it as being similar to paintball but with real looking guns, and the shots don’t explode with paint when they hit you. Josh says that the game requires players to be totally honest, if you get shot once you’re out until one team wins.

Another enthusiast of air soft is Max Greenstein. Max got into air soft after his brother brought him to a few games out by the abandoned missile silos outside of Wasilla. Max was drawn to the game because it put him in a real gun to gun combat situation without running the risk of dying. After finding the game fun, and full of action, Max bought an Mp5 replica and got serious. Now he plays with his friends frequently over the spring, summer, and fall months, taking cover behind trees or hills and crawling on the ground to avoid fire waiting for a perfect shot.

Max says that airsoft is not very popular in Anchorage. Max and Josh usually have to go outside of town to Eagle River or Wasilla to find an area they can play in without the risk of shooting anybody not in the game. There are no leagues or official games so it is still something that people have to do outside of official regulation. Until a major airspoft company comes to Alaska it is still something that Josh and Max have to do out in the woods.for KUAA news, I'm Donald McSherry